By Rodney Olsen
The Earth Sangha Native Plant Sale, co-sponsored by Arlington Regional Master Naturalists, occurred on May 6 and was a great success. Following the dictum that “good news is never old news,” here is account of the sale by Lisa Bright, Executive Director of Earth Sangha.
“Our spring plant sale, on Sunday, May 6, at our Wild Plant Nursery, was a huge success! We raised over $15,500, nearly all of it for restoration work in Fairfax County parkland. Hundreds of our plants found homes in local gardens. We also saw many old friends, and we made a lot of new ones as well. About 130 herbaceous and 85 woody species were on offer, all of them grown by us from locally-collected wild seed. About 160 people bought plants. Visitors also had a chance to buy packages of the Sangha’s Rising Forests Coffee, which is produced by the farmers in our Tree Bank / Hispaniola program. We sold over $1,000 worth of coffee—our largest one-day coffee sale by far. Overall, the sale was a record fundraiser for us and a substantial gain over last fall’s sale, which made a little under $8,500. (Last fall’s sale was our previous record). The success was largely due to all our hard-working nursery volunteers, especially our Arlington Regional Master Naturalist colleagues, who put many hours into preparing for the event. We are very grateful to all our nursery volunteers—and to all the patrons of our sale. We hope to see everyone again at the fall sale!”