Simple Gifts Community Garden joined forces again with South Wake Conservationists to hold an Open House together with the the SWC Native Plant Sale at the garden Saturday morning. This was our first open house since the grand opening last year and something we hope will become an annual tradition. The community came out in force, with an estimated 150-200 people attending this joint event. Garden leaders took turns leading small groups on tours of the garden, ending at the refreshments and membership tables by the shed. The reaction of visitors to what they saw and learned at the garden was consistently enthusiastic. In just a couple of hours, we added eight new families to our membership rolls!

The native plant sale was also very successful. The seventeen species of plants offered were very popular, with the majority sold within the first hour and every single plant sold before the 2 1/2-hour event ended. It was great to see the enthusiasm of so many people in the community for planting native!

Many thanks to so many garden volunteers and contributors that made this event possible. We had twelve garden volunteers who prepared signage, brought and setup supplies and equipment, hosted garden tours, helped with refreshments, enrolled new members, and ran the kids’ seed planting activity, in addition to the SWC plant sale and activities. It was teamwork at its best!

Now it’s back to work to continue producing the fresh, organic produce for our community!