Plant sale goes off with sun in Wiscasset

Sun, 05/14/2017 - 7:30am

Dresden’s Kelli Wallace and sons Kai Morse, 6, and Owen Morse, 2, were out Mother’s Day shopping Saturday for her mother Melissa Moore and the boys’ paternal grandmother Betsy Morse. Then Wallace spotted the Garden Club of Wiscasset’s annual plant sale at the Wiscasset Municipal Building.

She stopped. Moore, of Bowdoinham, and Betsy Morse of Wiscasset both love to garden, she explained. So far, she’d picked out a pot of pink astilbe. “There are some beautiful plants,” Wallace said. She used to garden when she lived on Bailey Island.

In the sale’s “Garden Stuff for Kids” section beside the parking lot, her sons planted beans to take home in cups. The section was in its second year as part of the long-running event, club members said. Among the sale items were children’s gardening books starting at 50 cents. “We want to grow gardeners,” member Virginia Milligan of Newcastle said about the section’s aim.

The sunny morning of the sale came a day before a predicted deluge of rain Sunday. Everyone was praying the rain would wait, and it did, Milligan said, smiling.

In and outside the building, members helped shoppers make their picks. Member Crissy Swartz also made one of her own, a bleeding hearts plant. The beginning gardener said it would have taken her six or seven years to grow one that size. “And it’s already there for me. So I can enjoy it right away ... It has these little tiny hearts. And it’s a huge plant.” Swartz joined the club as a new Wiscasset resident wanting to meet people and is glad she did.

The sale is a fundraiser for the club’s efforts that include scholarships and community projects. Saturday’s installment raised more than $5,000, member Emily Adler reported in an email Sunday.