by Ardeana Hamlin
of The Weekly Staff
Snow may still be on the ground and ice may be floating down the Penobscot River, but spring is here. A sure sign of that? — PICA, Power in Community Alliances, is conducting its annual plant sale, an event it has offered gardeners for 25 years.
Each year, PICA partners with Pete and Julie Beckford of Rebel Hill Farm in Clifton who provide the field grown perennials for Pica’s plant sale. The plants are grown and nurtured locally, and are Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association certified. The plants are either native to Maine or native to North America east of the Rockies.
The Beckfords are political activists and longtime members of PICA and take a great deal of pride in producing hardy, native plants that thrive well in Maine gardens.
According to a message from the Beckfords to the readers of the 2015 Plant Sale Catalog comprising 23 pages, the first Pica plant sale took place on a sidewalk in 1990. In 2002 gardeners purchased 1,586 plants. In recent years that number has held steady at 500.
According to the Beckfords, the one plant they most associate with the sale is the orange Oriental poppy, which proves to be popular with gardeners every year.
Karen Volckhausen of Orland has been involved in the plant sale since 1992 when she first joined PICA.
“I started a garden and I needed something to put in it. I bought so many flower plants through the PICA Plant Sale over the years, I decided to go into the cut flower business 11 years ago,” she said. She is the owner of Happy Town Flowers. “I still have spiderwort and anemones in my garden that I bought in 1992 from the plant sale.”
Volckhausen said the plant sale is a significant fundraiser for PICA. “It’s for a really good cause, that’s always a great side benefit to the sale,” she said. “The plants are hardy, healthy, vigorous and beautiful.”
The Plant Sale Catalog contains a list of 40 plants to choose from, including meadow anemone, native columbine, common milkweed, foxglove, echinacea, Japanese iris, Siberian iris, bee balm, phlox, rhubarb, aster, veronica and viola — or opt for big-leaved aster that grows as a ground cover in Acadia National Park, or Helenium autumnale which was found blooming at the edge of the Penobscot River — it doesn’t get much more native than that.
The sale offers plants to attract hummingbirds, butterflies and pollinators, plants to please the eye, plants that thrive in sun, shade or a little bit of both, and plants that prefer moist or dry soil. The catalog contains a list of which plants prefer which growing conditions.
This year’s special plant sale offerings, at a cost of $11 each, are pagoda dogwood shrub, sensitive fern, purple flowering raspberry and bloodroot.
The plants come in gallon-sized containers. The cost per container is $8, four for $30 or $7 each for 10 or more plants.
Plants must be ordered by Friday, May 1. Plants will be available on or shortly after the weekend of May 16. Payment is due when the plants are picked up.
Proceeds from the plant sale will support PICA’s work for human rights and economic justice in Maine, joint projects in Bangor’s sister city Carasque, El Salvador, and the Dignity for All campaign.
To access the plant sale catalog, or for information, go to pica.ws, email info@pica.ws or call 947-4203.