Learning from experience: Santa Fe Botanical Garden annual sale

Patricia West-Barker | The New Mexican

9/6/2008 - 9/7/08

Last fall, when the Santa Fe Botanical Garden held its first plant and wreath sale, the organization tried to jam all the activities — delivery of donated plants and arranging of items as well as the sale itself — into one day, with both volunteers and buyers crammed into an overheated greenhouse.

"We made a little money and we had a lot of fun," said SFBG executive director Linda Milbourn, "and we realized that we could do a lot better."

Visitors to the second sale, to be held at the Santa Fe County Fairgrounds on Sept. 13, will benefit from the organization's more organized and expansive approach to the event.

This year, Milbourn said, they have rented the indoor exhibit hall for three days so donors can drop off their plants on the 11th and 12th and volunteers will have time to groom and prune them, label them, and set them up in an orderly way before the sale opens at
8 a.m. on the 13th.

The group also has been more proactive in lining up plant donations. Seeds of Change has been very generous, Milbourn said, allowing SFBG volunteers to dig and divide plants from the company's extensive farm in Española. Local gardeners have also stepped up to the donation plate in larger numbers this year.

"SFBG board member Jan Hale Barbo has been phenomenal," Milbourn said, "and (Santa Fe garden guru) Elspeth Bobb's gardener has been planning to donate a large number of plants — and anything that comes from her garden is special for people who know of her."

More than 500 plants have already been dug up from area gardens, said Fran Cole, who joined the SFBG this year as its outreach director. She expects "another 200 or so (donations) from people who have called and said, 'I'll be there on the 11th and 12th with my plants.' "

Also new to the sale this year are garden books. When the SFBG moved from Santa Fe Community College to new offices in Richards Business Park, off Rufina Street, Milbourn said, they had to take along all the books that had been donated to them over the past 20 years. "So we've culled the collection a little bit," she said, "and have between 100 and 150 great books — from coffee-table books to reference books and everything in between — that we'll be selling for pennies on the dollar."

In addition to the books, Cole said, this year's sale will also feature handmade cards and garden pots and other ornaments. Among many donated pieces, she said, are four particularly stylish cast-stone planters, each 2-feet by 2-feet in size.

But not everything at the sale is new. The dried-flower wreaths that were so popular at last year's sale will back.

Like last year, almost all the decorative plant matter and the grape vines for the wreath bases came from Barbo's substantial gardens and vineyard in La Mesilla. "When the vines were pruned in April, I used those prunings to make the wreath bases — and I've been drying flowers as they came along all summer," Barbo said. "Then those talented people came and made the wreaths from the material that I supplied."

All the plant materials used in the wreaths — including larkspur, hydrangea, Russian sage and sage-green four-wing saltbush — were grown on her property, she said, except for the staghorn sumac she brought back from a trip to Arkansas.

Robyn Suzuki, a neighbor of Barbo's who is not a member of SFBG, supervised the wreath-making. "She says she's not a joiner," Barbo said, "but she's the one who takes it and runs with it."

The wreaths were only made in two sizes this year — either roughly 12 or 24 inches in diameter — because the really large ones didn't sell well last year. They hadn't been priced as of press time, but most should be under $50, Barbo estimated.

Cole said she heard that at last year's sale, the wreath line started forming even before the doors opened, so when the sale started, "all the wreath people flew in and bought the wreaths out." This year, she said, they will have an espresso cart to serve the folks waiting on the early-morning line.

Permanent site eyed

Both Milbourn and Cole noted that the organization hopes to make the plant sale not just an annual event, but also a substantial fundraiser.

"The Botanical Garden is positioning itself to launch a capital campaign within a year," Cole said, "so that we can raise the money to build a permanent site on Museum Hill." This year's plant sale will help them get ready to launch the capital campaign, she said, with all the funds raised by future fall sales dedicated to establishing and maintaining that site.

The organization's two existing locations — the Lenora Curtin Wetland Preserve and Ortiz Mountains Educational Preserve — are nature preserves, not the kind of demonstration garden most people expect from botanical societies, Milbourn said. But the Museum Hill project now under way will change all that. "The priority for that garden is to be beautiful and to really showcase plants that thrive in our conditions."

Drawings of the master plan for the Museum Hill garden have been completed, Milbourn added, and will available at the plant sale so people can take a look at them. The more detailed and plant-specific design work should be completed later this year, she said, with major fundraising following in 2009.

She expects the first physical work on the new botanical garden to start in 2010.

Contact Patricia West-Barker at 986-3085 or pwest@sfnewmexican.com.