Spring Plant Sale Update

Please come out this Saturday, April 10th from 9 am to 1 pm and shop.

Bring friends and relatives. Proceeds will benefit our campus green efforts.

We will be setup in and around the greenhouse.

Small Middle School has been hosting spring and fall plants sales for 8 years now.

Increasingly we are growing what we sell. Here is our student produced offerings. Most are either in 4 inch pots or one gallon containers:

Spiderwort

Inland Seaoats

Heartleaf Skullcap

Obedient plant

Skeletonleaf goldeneye

Prostrate Rosemary

Mexican Oregano

Salvia greggi

Eve's necklace

Aloe vera

Sabal minor

Evergreen sumac

Over the years we have had tremendous support from a couple of nurseries. One, Medina Garden Nursery, was featured in the previous blog entry. The other has been with us since the beginning, Emerald Garden.

Jeff Yarborough runs the nursery, and he has been a huge supporter of our campus gardens since we began in the spring of 2000. He has outright donated dozens of plants and much of our pond equipment. What wasn't donated, was generously discounted. He has been a guest speaker in my classroom. Whenever I need

information, advice, or help finding unusual native species, he is the first one I turn to.

For our plant sales, he provides the bulk of our inventory with little mark up on his end. What we don't sell, he cheerfully takes back.

Forming a partnership with a local business is a crucial part of having a successful gardening program. Obviously, there is a limit to the number of schools any one business can support.

If you are a beginning garden sponsor, start with the closest nursery to your campus. The sign for Emerald Garden is visible from our school grounds. (More than once have I visited them on my half hour lunch break to get more vegetable starts, a memorial tree, or organic fertilizer.)

The nursery itself is a wonder. In addition to a very respectful inventory of native plants, they

specialize in ponds, fountains, aquatic plants, and fish. They also offer a wide variety of trees, cacti, adapted, xeriscape, and tropical species. Jeff likes to describe it as, " Aquatics to exotics."

All of Jeff's employees are knowledgeable and extremely helpful.

When I say Jeff provides us with plants for fundraisers, I mean truckloads. Tony's the guy that's there to help with loading and heavy lifting.

Following is the most complete list of the plants EG will be providing. Jeff's always good for some surprises. This is in addition to the Medina Garden Nursery donations listed in the previous blog entry.

Some species are 4 inch pots, and others up to 15 gallon pots.

Trees:

Big Tooth Maple

Texas ebony

Desert Willow

Kidneywood

Fragrant Sumac

Cherry Laurel

Mountain Laurel

Rough Leaf Dogwood

Mexican Buckeye

Oklahoma Redbud

Vasey Oak

Lacey Oak

(other oaks available by request)

Vines:

Carolina Jessamine

Coral Honeeysuckle

Crossvine

Grasses:

Gulf Muhly

Mexican feather

Perennials:

Blackfoot daisy

Mountain sage

Purple coneflower

Coreopsis

Blue eyed grass

Columbine (red and yellow)

Woody stemodia

Damianita

Blackeye Susans

Browneye Susans

Guara

Mealy Blue Sage

Lantana (horrida and hybrids)

Esperanza

Rock penstemon

Starflower

Pink skullcap

Mexican Bush Sage

Tropical Milkweed

Beebalm

Winecup

Turk's cap

Rain lily

Strawberry plant

We will also have a small assortment of modest sized trees that Steven Fulton from Bamberger Ranch started from seed this winter for my students to pot up:

Shumard Red oak

Catalpa

Escarpment Cherry

Mexican Plum

Goldenball Leadtree

Steven also kindly donated some madrones and Blanco Crabapple that we'll be offering at future sales. Here are pictures of established ones that are currently blooming on our campus.