Described by Town & Country magazine as “One of the season’s best native-plant sales” the Wildflower, Native Plant and Seed Sale takes place every year on Mother's Day weekend in the Brandywine Museum of Art's courtyard. Admission to the sale is free and all proceeds benefit the Conservancy's Wildflower and Native Plant Gardens. At the sale, Conservancy garden staff members and volunteers can answer questions, give planting instructions, offer horticultural advice, and provide brief tours of the gardens.
One of the season’s best native-plant sales.
Plants
The plants in our sale are carefully nursery-propagated. None are collected from the wild. A large percentage are grown from seeds that are collected by our volunteers from the gardens surrounding the Brandywine River Museum of Art, and from the Conservancy’s adjacent meadows in Chadds Ford, PA. Many of our plants are difficult to find in retail garden centers, and all plants are ready for immediate transplanting.
Seeds
Packets of these same seeds, hand-collected, cleaned and packaged by the garden volunteers, are available during the plant sale as well as year-round in the Museum shop. Seed packets are $2 each and $5 for a set of any three packets. Click here for more information.
Compatible Species
Some plants are sold as small communities of compatible species. This means that a pot with a large Foamflower may also contain a seedling Wild Columbine or Wild Geranium; a Brandywine Bluebell may include a Dutchman’s Breeches; a Showy Coneflower might contain a Dense Blazing Star and a Smooth Beardtongue. Customers pay for the primary plant, only. Such combinations can be separated and planted individually or planted as one to grow as a group. Nearly every batch of plants at our sale is presented with an informative sign, usually containing a color photo, to help you better understand where the plant will grow best and what it can be expected to look like after it has grown a bit in your garden. To help you remember that information after you get home, each plant has a label which includes the basic attributes specific to that plant: typical size, time and color of flower, its sun preference (full sun, part shade, shade) and soil moisture preference (wet, moist or dry) and, if there is room on the label, a comment regarding its value to birds, bees and butterflies.
Pricing
Herbaceous plants (ferns, grasses, flowering perennials) are offered in a number of different pot sizes and typically range in price from $5 to $8 a pot. Woody plants (vines, shrubs, trees) are most commonly sold in one-, two- or three-gallon pots, with base prices typically at $19, $29 and $39, each.