2018 Spring Wildflower Market Update

By Dawn Weber
Member-at-Large, Plant Sale Chairperson, and
Chairperson, Technology Committee, Wild Ones – St. Louis Chapter

During the 2018 Mother’s Day weekend, Wild Ones – St. Louis Chapter sold 2,406 Missouri native wildflowers and shrubs to Spring Wildflower Market shoppers that were eager to learn about and purchase native plants. Some folks came in with plant lists, others were looking for guidance about what to buy, and we helped them all.

Our plants looked GREAT this year.  We had plenty of milkweed on hand, including lots of butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa). The lanceleaf coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata) and beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis) were in bloom.

Thanks to Sue Leahy and Susan Burk for once again participating the plant sale committee, I appreciate everything they do to make the plant sale successful for us and our customers. 

Thirty-eight Wild Ones members helped with this year’s sale by

• gathering boxes for shoppers
• setting up the booth and unloading plants
• helping customers locate and select plants
• checking out shoppers and keeping the line moving – our booth was one that did not have long lines!
• loading up the remaining plants at the end of the sale and tearing down the booth

Volunteers were given a $1 per plant discount as a thank you for donating their time, and many took advantage of the opportunity. 

 

After paying the vendor, our Chapter made a final profit of $4,495.  This money supports our Chapter’s gatherings, grant program, tabling event materials, the Landscape Challenge, and our support of the Native Plant School at Shaw Nature Reserve.

 
 
 

There were some changes this year:

• more signage to represent that we accept cash and checks only 
• we set up the booth slightly differently so that the checkout volunteers would not be in the sun in the afternoon
• we highlighted the upcoming native plant garden tour this year 
• sale hours changed this year with 2 more hours on Fri and 2 fewer hours on Saturday.  Our Friday booth entrance count was similar to last year (around 500) but our Saturday count was lower (around 275).  Could be attributed to the change in hours or the warm temperatures which made for a hot day. We’ll be counting again next year to see how the comparisons stack up over time. 

 

We’re thinking about 2019 already. Next year we plan to have a few more sawhorses so that we can raise up all of the plants to eye level and want to come up with a different method of attaching the signs to the mesh fencing, and continued tweaking of the entrance and exit to try to make it more obvious for the shoppers. 

Thanks again to everyone! Hope to see you in 2019!