Victoria weekend plant sales

Forget the cottage and the bugs and barbecues, Victoria Day weekend belongs to gardeners. They'll be at the garden centres of course, piling up wagon loads of annuals and perennials, and they'll be in your neighborhood looking for plant sales.

The backyard plant sale, how far that has evolved! My friends Dave and Cathy Cummins of Dundas have theirs running as smoothly as the assembly line at Toyota. A computer program spits out plant labels, and sharp photos show hapless gardeners what the plants look like. Many weeks of hard labour precede the sale, but on the three-day holiday weekend the atmosphere at the sale is as fun as a fiddle contest.

Start your sleuthing now to find these sales. Contact your local Master Gardeners group and horticultural society, their members often have sales. Look in the classifieds, and watch for telltale signs in your neighborhood, the table on the front lawn, the many little pots, the clattering of trowels.

Velmon Haag calls herself the crazy orchid lady of Kitchener, that's her number one passion, but number two might be the obsessive collecting of all other plants on the planet.

"I bought hostas, grasses, campanulas," she says as she steered a wagon through the recent Royal Botanical Gardens Auxiliary plant sale. "I take the plants home slowly, first I store them at my neighbors and then I take them home in small groups so my husband won't notice them." Let's hope her husband doesn't see this edition of the Star, because she has another confession.

"After the RBG sale I went to the horticultural society sale in Kitchener. I bought 30 plants, hellebores, vines, I'm keen."

There will be many Velmons' out shopping at neighborhood plant sales this holiday weekend. The crafty ones will go home with real bargains.

My advice, first go for the ground covers. If someone is selling periwinkle, pachysandra, ivy, and ajuga it's likely to be a bargain. Planting big sections of ground cover can be pricey, so stock up when you see healthy supplies at a sale.

Head for the hostas. If someone has potted up divisions of 'Sum and Substance', 'Krossa Regal' or 'June', snatch them. Even unnamed hostas go a long way at covering up bare ground in the garden.

They won't be glamorous, but grab the grasses. Ornamental grasses seem to retain their value like a used Mercedes, so if you see them for bargain prices at a plant sale, spirit them away. Take them home, plunk them in the ground in full sun and put your feet up and watch them grow.

Buy ferns, any ferns. If you spy Japanese painted ferns, wood ferns or Christmas ferns, open your wallet. These are fine boned plants that make shady areas in your garden look refined and genteel. Prices are likely to be tasteful at a backyard plant sale, so grab a bargain when you see one.

If you're lucky enough to go to a sale where seed grown annuals are available, stock up like you're at Costco. You'll likely find annuals that are amazing and amusing. I would spring for flowering tobacco or nicotiana, especially the big fragrant types that spurt up to four feet tall. Cleome or spider flower is another willowy gem, that will reseed in the garden. Lavatera and cosmos are also old favorites that often get space at plant sales, and are well worth buying. These annuals are so useful because they also find a good fit with perennials in the garden.

After you take home your plant sale loot, be prepared to do some pampering until the weather is reliably warm. This means bringing annuals indoors at night if there are frost warnings, or putting a protective cover over them if you've already wedged them into the garden.

With empty boxes, a pocketful of cash, and the "plant finder" dialed into the GPS, you'll be armed for a successful weekend of shopping. By the time the flea bitten masses return from the cottage, you'll have created your own leafy retreat.