The annual LAVGC Plant Sale is a community service as well as fundraiser. Novice gardeners take little risk to buy inexpensive plants from garden club members, and the advice is free! Our plants have proven themselves in our gardens and we divide up the most vigorous and prolific and pot them up for sale. Thus, by natural selection, our sales tables are filled with the healthiest and most enthusiastic plants in the Livermore-Amador Valley.

Early Days

The 1986 all-day Spring Plant Sale was held on the sidewalk in front of a bank in Pleasanton and the inaugural haul was $100, surprising and delighting the entrepreneurs. With experience and determination, the second plant sale at the Community Bank grossed $177.25. From there the numbers grew: $640…$900…$1295…$1360…$1813, $2300, $3727

Dots and Sticks

Most plants at the first sale were priced at 10, 25, or 50 cents. Later, a clever member figured out a color system for marking like-priced plants with the same color sticky dot. No need to write the price on each plant, simply place a colored dot on the pot. Pages of red, yellow, orange, blue, purple, and white dots were purchased from the stationary store.

It was also soon determined that the plants must be priced before the sale day. Erma and Betty are in their second decade of welcoming plants into their yards a few days before the Saturday sale. On Friday, members gather at Erma’s and Betty’s to price the plants. This is a dicey job because how do you value a plant? Size, condition, appeal, and rarity all contribute to the judgment. Fortunately, we have members with opinions.

Experience fine-tuned the color system. We discovered that the fewer price points we had, the simpler, and we dropped the purple and orange dots. This was also easier for customers and clerks, who referred to large tagboard price signs at the sale to determine the total due for purchases. For special one-of-a-kind items, a one-of-a-kind price was written on a white dot.

Ahhhh, but the system was not perfect. Dots slid off wet plastic pots, rain wreaked havoc, and new pricers placed dots too low on the pots to be seen. With trepidation, Chair Solveig ordered colored plastic sticks from A. M. Leonard, which was the first sizable expenditure. Today, these red, white, blue, and yellow sticks are carefully recycled each year to avoid undue dips into our profits.

New tagboard signs show the effect of inflation. Ten-cent plants from the 80s and two-bit plants from the 90s are history. But we still offer Mystery Plants and overstocks for free!

Location, Location, Location

The Spring Plant Sale has always been located in Pleasanton while the Holiday Bazaar was held in November at the Livermore Barn. The Holiday Bazaar, from 1985 through 1996, featured dried arrangements, items of décor, houseplants, and lots of baskets.

Downtown Pleasanton locations included the Community Bank (1986 through 1993), Bank of Walnut Creek (1994), Domino’s parking lot (1995) and the parking lot at West Angela and Main Street (1996). The advantage of these locations was their proximity to the Saturday Produce Market, giving us many walk-by shoppers.

The disadvantages were availability and size. One location was only available on the weekend closest to St Patrick’s Day. For years after, we held the sales on that weekend, until we realized that March 17 was a tradition, not a restriction, and we changed to the first convenient Saturday in April, when we would have more plants in flower.

In the fall of 1996, Co-chairs Gerry and Solveig pored over Valley maps and trudged the streets looking for a bigger site with visibility and parking, and found the Amador High School parking lot. That April, they stood alone in the early hours before the sale, surveying the vast space and holding bags of flour. With a vehemence that set a watermark for angst felt by all chairs on every Plant Sale morning, Gerry said, “Never again!” And then they marked the flour lines to guide the delivery and organization of the truckloads of plants soon to arrive.

To regain the walk-by shoppers from the Produce Market, brave souls were sent down Main Street wearing Sandwich Board Advertising held over their shoulders with floral cloth bands. One year, the Chair accompanied Brave Soul to the Produce Market. The Chair snapped a colorful picture of Brave Soul inspecting plants at an herb stall, while flicking cigarette ashes off the Sandwich Board. “No, no,” quaked Brave Soul, “You must destroy that picture! My wife doesn’t know I smoke!”

The Day the Cops Came

In 1996, the Sale was held across Main Street from the Produce Market. A vendor feared these gardeners with their gathering of motley black pots would ruin his business, and he called for protection. A squad car drove Starsky-and-Hutch style into the middle of our sale and LAVGC members scurried to safer ground on the public sidewalks. President David strode confidently towards the armed cop and explained he had spoken with the proper authorities, who had duly authorized our gathering. But the proper authorities were busy with their own Saturday activities and there was some consternation until the officer radioed over scratchy devices long enough to determine no citations were necessary.

We have not been visited since by the Pleasanton Police. As a point of record, that policeman is the only person in the history of our plant sales that Maud couldn’t sell something to.

Pot Parties and Other Developments

As in all enterprises, need and opportunity motivate invention and scheming. For example, the good bakers of LAVGC provide goodies and coffee for the workers. When customers helped themselves to our snacks, what could we do but start selling it to them? But customers are as fickle as the weather and great urns of Starbucks go untouched if 9:00 am brings a warm sun, and lemonade is ignored on a gray day. We learn from experience and now we just hide our doughnuts and pots of coffee.

In recent years, ambitious and hard-working chairs have organized groups to pot up plants together. Thanks to this effort, we have ever more plants to spread across that vast parking lot, with numbers like 400 pots of irises and 500 pots of Japanese maples. And do the people come in proportion? In 2003, parking stanchions and yellow crime scene tape held back lines of anxious gardeners until 9 am.

But you never know what’s next.