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Friends of Indiana Dunes Native Plant Sale

February 25, 2010

Wildflowers everywhere! Saturday, April 3rd the Friends 14th Annual Native Plant Sale heralds the return of spring! Organized by the Friends of Indiana Dunes, the Native Plant Sale will bloom at the Indiana Dunes State Park Pavilion, Route 49 north at Lake Michigan, in Chesterton, Indiana from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Admission is free! Pre-Order deadline is March 20, 2010. Download the Pre-Order Form >.

Open shopping of all plant stock. Many knowledgeable gardening consultants will be available to answer all your native gardening questions. Nature, environmental and gardening books will be available for sale as well as a variety of free leaflets on planting with wildflowers, designing a native garden, and the many benefits of going native. All Native Plant Sale profits will support the mission of the Friends of Indiana Dunes.

That first native plant sale in 1996 was a modest offering of bare root plant stock, sold outdoors under a canopy, while Mother Nature refused to herald spring and showered us with a mix of rain, ice and snow. Noted ecologist and botanist Floyd Swink (now deceased) lectured on the value of gardening with native plants to a standing room only audience in the national lakeshore’s visitor center auditorium. The native plant sale rapidly outgrew most accommodations. Today every inch of the Indiana Dunes State Park Beach Pavilion is utilized. Shrubs and trees are downstairs, while Open Stock Plants and Pre-order Pickup are upstairs.

More than 120 native plant species, including woodland flowering plants and ferns; dry, medium and wet prairie flowering plants; as well as grasses, shrubs and trees. Most varieties are potted. Some spring woodland plants are available only as bare root stock to ensure greater success when you plant them immediately, regardless of the weather temperatures. All plant species in the sale are native to Lake, Porter and/or LaPorte counties, although not of local genotypes as those are not commercially available at this time. Our suppliers will again bring “Surprise Plants”, hand picked bonus selections of woodland and prairie plants from their greenhouses.

Consider pre-ordering! Only a limited quantity of each plant variety is ordered from our suppliers. Pre-orders are filled in the sequence in which they are received. Every year several varieties will sell out before the day of the sale as those plants went to pre-order customers. Pre-Order deadline is March 20, 2010. Download the Pre-Order Form >

For more information on the native plant sale or to volunteer for the native plant sale, please contact Zella Olson, Chair of the Friends, at (219) 926-3833.