Findlay Garden Club selling plants for charity

FINDLAY — Whether you have a green thumb or just like plants, members of the Findlay Garden Club are holding a "Grow with Us!" plant sale. Shoppers will find annuals, perennials, succulents and more May 15-16 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., or until the plants are gone. The event will be held rain or shine in the parking lot just west of St. Andrew's United Methodist Church at 120 W. Sandusky St. Plants will be coming from the gardens of many of the members, including club President Myra Sustae. She is also a member of the church and a new intern with the Hancock County Master Gardeners. There will be countless plants offered for sale. A lot of hers grew from seeds she started in January. Other plants she dug up from her yard. "I probably have a thousand now," Sustae laughed. Sustae grew up in Mercer County. Her knowledge of gardening came from her mother and grandmother. "This year we've got seven or eight in our garden club that are Master Gardener interns and volunteers. So we're going to have them circulate and answer questions," she said. One of them will be Linda Finsel, a Master Gardener volunteer who is also a member of the garden club and co-chair of the sale. "I haven't even started my work," said Finsel. "I'm digging up everything from my yard because I have so many daylilies that I dug last fall sitting in 5-gallon buckets in my garage that I'm going to clean and put in bags." Some of the plant varieties will include Shasta daisies, perennial verbena, chrysanthemums, gloriosa daisy, asiatic daisies, primrose, hosta, dwarf iris and jade plants. Vegetable plants, herbs and house plants will also be offered. "The nice part of it is that they're already pre-started," said Finsel. "All they need to do is transplant it into their garden, wherever they want. So they don't have to worry about seed starting maturity." Bulbs will be placed in plastic bags, and Finsel will get some small pictures of what they are and adhere them to the bags so people know exactly what they're buying. She is also donating some Ohio native plants from her own yard like bee balm, black-eyed susan, coneflower and spiderwort. "A little bit of everything," Sustae said. "And we've got 30 people who are contributing so we may have a lot more than this." Extra flats will be available to carry the plants home. "This will also be right at the frost date so they shouldn't have to worry about frost," said Sustae. All club members were asked to either donate seedlings or contribute service hours. To help with that, the women set up a club workshop, said Finsel. "For instance, anybody who has plants in their backyard that need to be dug and repotted into smaller pots, we would have teams come out and help them do that so that the owner of the home didn't have to worry about, oh, I've got this many flowers that need to be dug. So we have teamwork," she said. And if they don't have anything to donate because maybe they live in an apartment, they can help someone who has a big yard, said Finsel. "We have potters and diggers," added Sustae. She had four women come out and help her. "Some of them dug. Some of them potted. We all worked together. It was a good project for fellowship, too," Sustae noted. The plants will be labeled and priced at either $2, $3, $5 or $10. Finsel said the club is licensed under the Ohio Association of Garden Clubs which allows them to sell plants. "We're going to keep the costs down. We're not going to charge a lot. It's all from our gardens," said Sustae. There will also be a table with items people no longer need like gently used gardening tools, pots and books. "You've got the pride of knowing by purchasing something, you're giving back to the community in the homeless laundry or the park district because so many people are unaware of the mass homelessness or the poverty in Findlay," said Finsel. The United Women's Fellowship of St. Andrew's will sell food throughout the sale. The group will keep their proceeds. The church group last held a plant sale in 2021 and raised nearly $2,000, Sustae said. According to Finsel, the garden club held a sale several years ago. Profits went to the Walk to End Alzheimer's. Money raised from this sale will go to the Hancock Park District, St. Andrew's church for hosting the sale and the Olive Branch Laundry located in the church's annex. The laundry provides a place for individuals and families to wash laundry at no cost. The laundry recently celebrated its second anniversary. In that time, over 2,000 loads of laundry have been done.