Garden Club of Wiscasset tradition gets great weather, smiling shoppers

Mon, 05/15/2023 - 8:45am

“Just superb,” Wiscasset’s Julie Olsen said.

“A perfect day for planting,” Bath’s Margaret Leitch Copeland said.

“Could not be better,” with the breeze and without bugs, Wiscasset’s Jan Whitfield said.

Everyone Wiscasset Newspaper asked at Garden Club of Wiscasset’s annual plant sale May 13 was pleased about the mild sunny morning as they waited for the sale to open; moments later while lined up to pay; or manning the sale, a spring tradition that raises money for scholarships and the club’s beautification projects, according to an announcement.

GWC member Alice Smith Duncan of Alna was both working Saturday’s sale and shopping it, for rudbeckia. It is about the only kind of plant that holds up for her, she said. “Have you tried sedum,” shopper Amanda Widbiller of Wiscasset suggested. In line earlier for the sale’s start, Widbiller laughed and moved her elbows in and out saying she had them if needed. 

Shopper Nancy Roby of Wiscasset said she had been nearer the front of the line to get into the plant sale until she left for a higher priority: the cinnamon buns Jan Flowers made for the bake sale that was part of the event on the town office grounds. Sitting on the down flap of a pickup truck next to the bake sale were Flowers’ husband Larry and Damariscotta’s Peter Arnold. He and wife Geneie Everett are GCW members. 

Arnold had filled five-gallon buckets with water to hold a sale tent in place.

Attendees interviewed shopped for Mother’s Day, for their own gardens, or both; many were seeking hardy perennials and shop the sale every year.