Native Plant Sale

Our annual sale is one of the biggest native plant sales in New England. In past years we have offered both a pre-order option (available to members), as well as a one-day sale open to the public. In 2020, because of covid-19, we had to re-tool the sale to be pre-order only. However we do it, we are committed to bringing you as diverse a mix of native species as possible, including:

  • Perennials for sun, shade, part-shade, and all types of soil conditions. 
  • A large selection of ferns, both evergreen and deciduous.
  • Grasses and sedges, for cool season and warm season interest. 
  • Trees and shrubs, at small sizes you can take home in your car. Remember that native trees and shrubs do the most to increase biodiversity and to enhance the wildlife value of your landscapes.
  • Numerous custom grown species, to improve the availability of unique or hard-to-find natives!  

Most of the species we sell are native to Massachusetts and New England. We include a few additional species from the eastern United States, especially if we believe they have ecological value here or they are great finds that are otherwise hard to source.

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    We are again planning our sale to be by pre-order only, due to continuing concerns about covid-19. Choose from approximately 80 species. Plant pick-up will be scheduled on one of these dates. Open to members at the Advocate/Family level and above. Thanks for your support!

    When:

    June 10 - 12 | All day

    Where:

    Waltham Field Station, 240 Beaver Street, Waltham

  • Our 2020 Sale

    Thank you to everyone who made our 2020 sale a huge success, despite the tremendous challenges of running it in the covid-19 era. We filled 173 orders, double the number that we have ever assembled in past years, and distributed just over 4,000 plants in total—nearly as many as in 2019!

    • Our best-selling plants included Asclepias incarnata (swamp milkweed), a perennial favorite, as well as our custom grown Antennaria neglecta (field pussytoes) and Solidago flexicaulis (zig-zag goldenrod).
    • We were delighted to sell a much larger volume of shrubs and trees than in past pre-sales. Lindera benzoin (spicebush), Aronia melanocarpa (black chokeberry), and Sambucus canadensis (elderberry), were the most popular. 
    • This was the most labor intensive plant sale we have ever run, and we had to do it with a much smaller volunteer crew for safety reasons. We are so grateful to our tremendous team of 24 volunteers, who invested well over 500 hours of work into the program, both in advance planning and then during the full week we spent managing the delivery and distribution of the plants, amid temperatures that soared above 90 degrees.
    • Sale participants traveled from as far away as Portland, Maine and Warwick, Rhode Island, and throughout Massachusetts, from Shelburne Falls to Hubbardston to Chatham.
    Native Plant Sale participants.
    Our plant sale buyers came from across Massachusetts, as well as from New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island. This graphic maps sale participants by zip code. Light green areas show regions with fewer customers, while progressively darker green areas represent increasing numbers. Cambridge, Arlington, and Boston led in participant numbers with 48 orders, closely followed by Brookline, Waltham, Lexington, Newton, and Melrose.