The Virginia Living Museum will hold its annual fall plant sale the last two weekends in September, Sept. 19-20 and 26-27. Native plants are good choices for area gardeners because such plants tolerate Tidewater’s weather and serve as food and shelter for area wildlife, while also providing a good show in the garden, says museum Horticulture Curator Bruce Peachee.
A large selection of native wildflowers, shrubs, grasses and small trees will be available at the sale. There will be plants for a wide variety of garden sites - sunny, shady, wet and dry. Many of these are excellent plants for attracting butterflies, hummingbirds and other wildlife to your yard. And fall is an excellent time for planting a new garden or modifying an old one.
Among the selections will be Indian pink, green coneflower, aromatic aster, ninebark, coral honeysuckle, Franklin tree, fringe tree, spicebush, swamp azalea, witch alder, pink muhly grass, great white trillium, butterflyweed, nodding ladies’ tresses and Tennessee Coneflower.
All the plants are nursery propagated and many are not available in the commercial nursery trade.
Sale hours are 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays and noon to 3 p.m. on Sundays. The sale is held rain or shine. Admission to the sale is free.
The museum is located at 524 J. Clyde Morris Blvd., Newport News (exit 258-A off I-64). For additional information, call the museum's horticulture staff at 757-595-1900 or visit the web site at www.thevlm.org.
The museum’s horticulture staff holds this annual sale as a fund-raiser, but the real goal is to introduce the gardening public to the incredible variety of native plants that will do well in the landscape, and to educate them about those that are better left in the wild.
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Credit Virginia Living Museum
The deep red firecracker flowers on Indian pink are sure to catch the eye of all who visit your garden, including hummingbirds. Indian pink will be available at the Virginia Living Museum’s fall native plant sale
Sept. 19-20 and 26-27.