2025 Spring Plant Sale; May 10th and 11th
WHERE: Westvale – please see our Newsletter for address.
WHEN: 05/10/2025: 9:00am to 3:00pm; 05/11/2025: Noon to 3:00pm
This spring we’re having a browse-about sale as well our tree and shrub pre-order.
We pre-order trees and shrubs from White Oak Nursery. Check the Native Plant Shopping Guide to find which plants White Oak Nursery offers. Please see newsletter for further details.
Please note: payments accepted for the plant sale are limited to cash or check.
Here’s a sample of the plants we may have available at the browse-about sale:
Butterfly Milkweed – Asclepias tuberosa
Sneezeweed – Helenium autumnale
False/Oxeye Sunflower – Heliopsis helianthoides
Wild Lupine – Lupinus perennis
Wild Bergamot – Monarda fistulosa
Cutleaf Coneflower – Rudbeckia laciniata
Brown-eyed Susan – Rudbeckia triloba
Smooth Aster – Symphyotrichum leave
Blue Vervain – Verbena hastata
Shooting Star – Dodecathion meadia
Early Meadow Rue – Thalictrum dioicum
Nodding Onion – Allium cernuum
Eastern Red Columbine – Aquilegia canadensis
Harebell – Campanula rotundifolia
Prairie Smoke – Geum triflorum
American Coral Bell – Heuchera americana
Robin’s Plantain – Erigeron pullchellus
Bottle Gentian – Gentiana andrewsii
Seaside Goldenrod – Solidago sempervirens
Clustered Mountain Mint – Pycanthemum muticum
Red Bee Balm – Monarda didyma
Appalachian Sedge – Carex appalachica
Great Blue lobelia – Lobelia siphilitica
Golden Alexander’s – Zizia aurea
Hairy Beardtongue – Penstemon hirsutus
Little Bluestem – Schizachyrium scoparium
New England Aster – Symphyotrichum novae-angliae
Green headed coneflower – Rudbeckia laciniata
Ohio spiderwort, Tradescantia ohiensis
2025 Fall Plant Sale: TBD
Our native plant sales
You can find the dates, locations and other details about our Spring and Fall sales in our Newsletter. Just fill out our Contact form and select “Newsletter” to subscribe.
Don’t forget that you can also acquire native plants from the local native plant nurseries featured in our free Native Plant Shopping Guide.
Fall native plant sale
Our major plant sale has always been in the fall, generally on the first or second Saturday and Sunday of September.
This may seem odd to traditional gardeners who see spring as planting time. This is probably because so many plants for conventional landscaping are annual bedding plants, such as petunias or marigolds. These non-native annuals are planted in the spring and discarded in the fall, often replaced by fall non-native ornamentals, such as mums.
But fall is a great planting time for plants that are meant to be part of rich, diverse, living landscape that supports life: native perennial herbaceous plants, grasses, vines, and trees and shrubs.
Of course, this plant sale is a major fundraiser, enabling HGCNY to pay our monthly speakers and to fund our free newsletter. But our primary purpose is to get native plants planted in CNY landscapes, previously difficult to do since there are very few local nurseries that have native plants. Fortunately, this is changing and we welcome an increasing number of new native plant nurseries!
So another purpose of our sale is to support true native plant nurseries in the general CNY region. Since many of these may be too far for some people to travel to buy just a few plants, so we bring them here to Syracuse on consignment. We’ve had great partnerships, beneficial to HGCNY, to the nurseries, and to the wildlife that depends on native plants.
We’ve learned over the years that this two-day event is a wonderful educational opportunity, with our members able to talk with people about the plants, make recommendations, and just get to know fellow CNYers who want their landscapes supporting life. And we host the sale at Our Habitat Garden, so people can see what many of the plants will look like when they mature.
Spring native plant sales
Since our parent organization, Wild Ones, is one of the partners in the Monarch Joint Venture, we also offer native, mostly local-ecotype milkweeds.
Two changes from past sales
In the past, we included common cultivars (i.e. “named” varieties) of native plants, but we support the Wild Ones position that some of these “nativars” don’t offer the habitat and ecological benefits of the species — and none of the genetic diversity — so we no longer include nativars.
Sadly, we no longer invite our members to donate their native plants to the sale due to our concern about spreading non-native earthworms, especially the Asian jumping worms. They are indeed in Central NY!! (See Our Habitat Garden’s Earthworm page for more information.)
NOTE: Plants from nurseries are not guaranteed to be free of jumping worms either, but we’re trusting that they are more aware and knowledgeable about preventing them. We strongly urge people to check any plants they buy or receive from other people!