How THE Plant Sale Became GrowFest
Once upon a time, the Civic Garden Center started an annual plant sale for its community. Over the years, the event evolved into something really special: a celebration of growing, a place to get plants you couldn’t find locally, and eventually a big ol’ party. For those in the know, it became a highly anticipated, dearly beloved staple of the spring growing season.
With the COVID-19 pandemic and the shifting needs of our community, a lot has changed about the original event in recent years. The Preview Party is gone. Other excellent local plant sales have proliferated. We've solidified our organizational focus around conservation and urban agriculture. As our staff and volunteers debriefed from the 2023 sale, we had to admit: The event had started to feel transactional as well as out of line with the rest of our programming and philosophy. We began looking for a way to breathe life back into it.
In September of last year, we tried an experiment. We created an event we believed would better fit our mission and the needs of the people we serve. How would our community respond to a plant-focused festival—a full-day event featuring hard-to-find plants, free learning sessions and opportunities to connect? When our first Fall Native Plant Festival was a runaway success, we knew we had a model that fit our aspirations and our vision. And we felt invigorated to look at our beloved Spring Plant Sale through a similar lens.
So it is with great excitement that we announce GrowFest, happening the first Saturday in May. It’s no longer just a sale—it's a full-out festival!
We’ll still have favorites like the Green Flea, the bake sale, kids’ activities, volunteer opportunities and plenty of plants. (Think herbs, new veggie starts alongside old favorites, native ephemerals and shade plants and pollinator-friendly native pollinator plants—the kinds of plants you hear us talk about in our classes and year-round programming.)
We’re integrating popular elements from the Fall Native Plant Festival, like food trucks, free educational sessions, live music and a place to leave your plants while you hang out on our beautiful spring-clad grounds.
We’re even adding a few new things, like bagged compost and a smoothie bike.
And we’re bringing back the fun vibe everyone misses from the old TPS to throw one big party!
In reimagining what our spring event can be, we believe we’re getting back to our Plant Sale roots to once again embody the original spirit of the event as well as our mission: a way to build community around gardening, education and environmental stewardship.
The need that The Plant Sale was created to fill no longer exists in the same way. Our community doesn't need just another plant sale. Instead, we see a need for camaraderie and conversations, for accessible learning opportunities and for access to hard-to-find materials—and that’s what GrowFest will provide.
