Third Annual Native Plant Sale

Northwoods Gateway Chapter of Wild Ones will kick off their native plant sales for the year on Saturday, June 1^st at the Antigo Farmers Market @ Heinzen Pavilion from 8-12 with a selection of over 40 native species. 

SUBMITTED BY: Jen Ventura

Treasurer of Northwoods Gateway Chapter of Wild Ones

In addition to familiar sun-loving native wildflowers, we’re offering native groundcovers, grasses, and shade-loving wildflowers as we continue to diversify our selections each year.

This sale is an opportunity to add native plants to your landscapes.  In doing so you will be supporting  important pollinators, birds and other wildlife (many of whose numbers have been critically in decline) by providing them their preferred nutrient-rich food, habitat and shelter. A happy consequence is you will be attracting more of these creatures to your yard for your viewing pleasure! Another plus for the native-plant gardener is that native plants have adapted to and evolved so closely with their native habitat that they do not require fertilizers and supplemental watering to thrive (though providing water in times of drought could keep them from going dormant for the year).  In general, because they co-evolved with native insects they do not require pesticides to maintain plant health. There are a host of other reasons to go native, but these reasons alone make it a worthy mission to bring more native plants to your garden.

This year we will also have packets of seeds, some herb plants, and a limited supply of doll-sized, gorgeous hand-painted aprons (approximately American Girl doll size) that have a packet of Purple Coneflower seeds tucked in the pocket for sale.

If you are interested in buying native plants but won’t be able to attend the Farmers Market, we encourage you to send us an email at northwoodsgateway@gmail.com or contact us on Facebook (Wild Ones Northwoods Gateway Chapter) to arrange a meeting to provide you some plants.  A list of the plants we are selling this year will be posted on Facebook. We will also have our plants for sale at our pollinator garden on 2nd Avenue on a few Saturday mornings during the summer.  When those dates are set they’ll be posted on our website northwoodsgateway.wildones.org and Facebook page.

NOTE: If you have a stash of the basic (non-decorative) 2.5“ or 4“ plastic pots at home, we’d love to take them off your hands so bring them to any of our sales. We want your clean, uncracked pots for two reasons.  For one, our group always needs small pots to start our seeds and larger pots to transfer the plants to as they grow. Secondly, this is our way of keeping those plain black pots out of landfills!  These pots are NOT recyclable.  We can’t recycle them, but we can re-use them.

Finally, we’re excited to announce that our summer “Evening at the Garden“ presentation in August will be a speaker from Save Our Songbirds.  Of course we will have plants for sale before the event-most notably many native plants that songbirds love and rely on!  A date will be set soon so watch for updates on our website and on Facebook. If you have any questions, drop us an email.

We look forward to seeing you at the Antigo Farmers Market!