Dunbar Garden Club plant sale chair Jean McComb with an Erythronium pagoda, one of the treasures on offer at the club’s annual sale on Saturday at 37th and Highbury.
By Carol Volkart
Race you to the Spotty Dotty! And don’t snatch all the sea-creaturish podophyllums before I get there. The shredded umbrella plant and the lily-like Erythronium pagoda also have my names on them. But lucky you, I’ll leave behind the Lady’s Slipper orchids – way too precious for my haphazard gardening skills.
There’s nothing like a preview of the Dunbar Garden Club’s annual plant sale to whet the appetite and get the competitive juices flowing. Saturday’s sale doesn’t begin until 10 a.m., but when I dropped by to see the pre-sale action on Thursday, I was warned to get there early because the lineup begins at 9 a.m. or even before.
“I have no idea what it will be like this year,” says plant sale chair Jean McComb, whose 20 years of managing the VanDusen Garden plant sale has given her plenty of experience with the vagaries of such events. “It depends on the weather; it depends on people’s moods. But I think it will do well.”
She said it may be the only neighbourhood plant sale left on the west side of Vancouver, and suspects it gets additional customers now that Stong’s big annual garden sale has ended.
One of the pluses of the Dunbar Garden Club’s event, she said, is that it includes many old-time plants no longer commonly sold in garden stores. Such plants are sometimes available from specialty sources, but often expensive. At the local sale, you get a good break – but McComb knows enough about plant values that there won’t be crazy giveaways.
The Dunbar Garden Club event gets underway many months before the lineup begins outside the carport at 3806 West 37th at Highbury, where the sale is held every year.
The previous fall, when plants are being divided, club members are asked to save chunks for the sale. People pot them up or bring them to the sale site to be potted, where they’re held over the winter.
McComb said work on the plants begins in April, getting more intensive as sale date approaches. On Thursday, that work was well underway, with the afternoon shift of volunteers dotted around the sunny garden, preparing and organizing the plants. Pots were being cleaned, dead leaves removed, labels and prices put on, and tables were set up in a U-shape in the carport where customers will file through, loading trays with their choices.
The tables were beginning to fill, with raspberry and strawberry plants at the front, leading on to chives, columbines, gooseberries, two kinds of iris, hostas, pulmonaria and acanthus. Already you could see it’s a great place for finding the workhorse plants that will fill a garden’s empty spaces without being too invasive – McComb makes sure of that – or breaking the bank.
Volunteer prepares plants to look their best for Saturday’s sale. Garden Club members and others contribute plants from their own gardens to the sale. Proceeds go to a variety of plant-related causes.
Outside, in what the workers called “the back 40” where the plants are stored for preparation, were the eye-catching ones that got my competitive juices flowing.
Mostly shade plants, because that’s what my garden requires, many belonged to the unusual category that McComb had mentioned.
The plants weren’t priced yet, but I’m tempted by the podophyllums, with their bizarrely beautiful shapes and colours. There’s the Spotty Dotty, with its green umbrella-shaped leaves spotted with bronze. There’s another tray of quivering red-leaved podophyllums, their down-turned umbrella leaves bringing to mind a batch of red sea creatures.
The green Spotty Dotty stands out.
Red podophyllums have a certain aquatic allure.
The shredded umbrella plant, Syneilesis aconitifolia, with its grey-green leaves resembling – yes, a shredded umbrella – would be a standout in one of my garden’s dead zones, especially if it reached its potential height of three feet. And who wouldn’t want an Erythronium pagoda (pictured at top), a type of trout lily, with its fresh green leaves and jaunty yellow blooms ready to greet you every spring?
Imagine this shredded umbrella plant at three feet high.
Moving on to utter decadence, there are a few Lady’s Slipper orchids, so precious that gardeners like me should only turn away. But for someone who knows what they’re doing, what a treasure!
Those precious Lady’s Slipper orchids await buyers at Saturday’s sale.
See you in the lineup on Saturday morning. I’ll be the one with a tray of workhorse shade plants – and maybe, if I’m lucky and adventurous enough, a bizarrely coloured Spotty Dotty!
(The annual Dunbar Garden Club Plant Sale will be held rain or shine from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, April 25, at 3806 West 37th Ave. at Highbury St. Garden tools and pots will also be on sale, and there will be tea, coffee and treats. Master gardeners will be available to answer questions.)
Carol, you have surely inspired both the green thumbs and, like me, the all-thumbs gardeners of Dunbar. What a great event. Thank you to all the volunteers who are so willing to share their time and expertise.
Wishing you a very successful Spotty Dotty Saturday!