Plant stall

On Saturday it's the Summer Fair at my grandchildrens' school. For the last 2 years, since the eldest started school, my daughter and I have run the plant stall.  The first year it was a bit of a last minute thought that we could do it and we gathered together what plants we both had to make up a decent stall. I always have plant cuttings potted up around the garden ready for those requests from church coffee mornings, so we didn't do too badly.  The next year I was much better prepared, with more plants, perennials, annuals, vegetables, herbs and  we had 4 tables almost collapsing under the weight!

We've had great fun each time, selling our plants and talking to people about gardening. We even encouraged children to get gardening.  When they arrived at the stall with 50p to spend we gave them courgette plants, strawberries, sunflowers and anything which was easy and fun to grow.  I had a couple of jam jars with flowers I'd cut from the garden, just to decorate the stall and one little girl bought them for her mum!

Each year when we've finished, we think about how we can improve things for the next year. I start potting up cuttings in the autumn and then again in the spring.  I find plants sell better if they are in flower. Perennials are the most popular, although some annuals sell quite well such as cosmos and sweet peas.  It can get difficult finding more variety of plants to sell as I am limited to what I have in my own garden. We try to save vegetable plants from our own allotment planting.   This year we  have some purple sprouting broccoli, kale, squash, courgette, tomatoes and climbing beans.

We found that people wanted to leave the plants to pick up later whilst they go around and enjoy the fair.  So we now have a 'Plant Creche' so they can 'buy now, collect later'. Pricing the plants is difficult as I know how much they would cost in the garden centre, but at a school fair, people want bargains. So the big healthy looking ones I price slightly lower than the garden centre and then there are others which may not look as good which go cheaper.

As the day of the Summer Fair gets closer, I am looking forward to getting my garden back.  For the last few months there have been plants all over the place, along the paths, on the potting benches, stacked up in the grow houses. It will be great to be able to walk through the garden without falling over boxes of pots.  I just hope we manage to sell them all or at least most of them, I don't really want to have to bring them back home.
And looking at the weather today, with the rain heaving down, I'm hoping for a dry day.