Cambridge Plant & Garden Club 
Partners with Local High School to Sell Native Plants

August 07, 2024

Native plant sales raise funds and nurture beneficial bugs.
Jan Ferrara, Zone I

Like many GCA clubs, Cambridge Plant & Garden Club (CP&GC) has sought to educate and encourage gardeners to add sustainable native species to their gardens. What better way than to host a native plant sale?! For the third year, the CP&GC collaborated with a local high school to sell native plants. It is a pairing of expertise: Cambridge Rindge & Latin School (CRLS) students handle the technological know-how—creating a native plant “zine”—and physical help before and during the sale, while garden club members select and order the plants, develop the marketing information, and promote and manage the sale. 

The May sale offered four shade plants (eastern columbine, downy skullcap, lady fern, and maidenhair fern) and four sun plants (milkweed, orange coneflower, purple coneflower, and foxglove beardtongue) selected by club members, and sold at a little over cost. Due to the sale popularity, inventory has grown from 1,100 landscape plugs in 2022 to almost 1,900 plants this year. The sale goal is not to make money, but to get native plants out into the world and raise awareness of the benefits to butterflies, bees and birds.

This garden club/high school partnership continues throughout the year with CP&GC partnering with the CRLS students on distributing native plant seeds at city-wide Composting Day and Biodiversity Day. In addition, CP&GC and CRLS have created a native plant garden at the high school. Proceeds from the native plant sale will go towards this effort and other student environmental initiatives.

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