CONWAY — Looking for that last-minute gift for Mother’s Day?
Members of the Faulkner County Master Gardeners hope area residents will consider a gift from the group’s annual plant sale, set for 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Conway Expo Center, 2505 E. Oak St.
“Since it’s so close to Mother’s Day, we will have a variety of hanging baskets and container gardens in decorative pots,” said Donna Woodard of Conway, plant sale committee chairwoman. “We will also have garden craft items for sale, such as garden art and other whimsical items.
“We will have a minimum of 8,000 plants and hope to have as many as 10,000 plants for sale,” Woodard said. “We will have annuals, perennials, house plants, succulents, vegetables, herbs, trees and shrubs.”
Sheila Nash of Greenbrier, a past president of the Faulkner County Master Gardeners, said a “new and unusual plant for the sale is the Amorphophallus, known by its common name, voodoo lily.
“It grows from a bulb, sending up a bloom in early spring, which then dies to be replaced by plant foliage in the summer,” Nash said. “It goes dormant for the winter, then comes back next spring. We have 50 pots of these bulbs planted, which will produce plants this year, age 1, and will bloom at age 2 to 4 years.
“Another unusual plant is the Queen Anne’s Tears Bromeliad, a tender perennial (must spend the winter inside) that has a striking pink and blue bloom in the spring,” Nash said. “We will have a good assortment of succulents, which are currently trendy plants, drought tolerant and easy to care for.
“When you say iris, most people think of the traditional tall bearded iris,” Nash said. “We have those, but we also have several varieties — Louisiana iris, Siberian iris, Japanese iris, Japanese roof iris, Dutch iris and walking iris. Who knew there were so many different kinds of iris? They are all beautiful, and bloom times range from April to mid-June.
“We have daylilies, too,” she said. “People think of daylilies as the reblooming yellow Stella D’Oros that are often seen in commercial and residential plantings or the common orange ‘ditch lily.’ We have those but also have a couple hundred more ‘modern’ daylilies in creams, pinks, reds, burgundies and purples — a fabulous range of colors, sizes and shapes of blooms.”
Woodard said prices at the plant sale will be “quite reasonable, from $1 to $25 and up.”
“The majority of the plants — annuals and perennials — will sell for $2 to $6,” Woodard said. “We will have a few things for $1, and the container gardens and hanging baskets will be priced for $25 and up.
“Proceeds from the plant sale go toward scholarships for high school seniors who are planning to major in an agriculture-related field in college. We normally give four to five scholarships a year,” Woodard said.
“Proceeds also help us continue to provide garden education for Faulkner County,” she said.
“Most everything else is free,” Woodard said. “There is free parking, free admission, free tool sharpening, free advice and information, and free gardening demonstrations all day.”
Topics for the gardening demonstrations include roses, bees, fire ants, crape myrtle bark scale, butterflies and butterfly gardens, fairy gardens and composting.
There will also be a drawing for a hand-crafted potting bench made by Archie Musselman of Conway, the husband of Master Gardener Joyce Musselman. Raffle tickets will be available at the plant sale.
An added attraction at this year’s sale will be a display of artwork by members of the Conway League of Artists.
“Artists will be set up demonstrating their work,” Woodard said. “The group will donate a painting, which will be raffled, with proceeds benefiting both the Conway League of Artists and the Faulkner County Master Gardeners.”
Members of the Faulkner County Master Gardeners have been collecting and growing flowers and plants for the sale for several months. Many members have hosted plant digs at their gardens.
Woodard said seven digs were held in the fall and nine digs in recent months, including one in March at the home of Florene Phipps near Mayflower. Phipps has hosted these digs for several years and normally serves lunch following the dig.
“I joined in 2007 and began hosting digs the next year,” Phipps said. “It’s a lot of fun. I love it.
“This year, we dug crape myrtles, buckeye, yellow calla lilies, arum, pony-tail cactus, daffodils, chrysanthemums, two kinds of ground clover, gladiolus, ferns and garlic chives. That was quite a day’s work.
“I’ll be working at the plant sale,” Phipps said, adding that she has never been an officer in the local organization, only a “worker bee.”
For more information on the Faulkner County Master Gardeners or their plant sale, contact Richard Klerk at the Faulkner County Cooperative Extension Service Office at (501) 329-8344 or raklerk@uaex.edu. The Master Gardener program is under the auspices of the Cooperative Extension Service, which is part of the University of Arkansas System, Division of Agriculture.