Dear Editor: 

Local gardeners/library patrons and volunteers held their first Native Plant Sale on the library lawn Saturday, June 1. 

The proceeds of $1,380 will go to support the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library and all their wonderful programs. 

The focus was on native plants this year because they are so important to our eco-system. Native plants support pollinators and birds, they help protect our precious watershed, they are relatively easy to grow and they are beautiful!  

The sale was a success thanks to many dedicated volunteers who divided plants from their gardens or started plants from seed, helped with set up and take down and helped with sales. Many thanks to: BJ Dobson, Denise and Howie Friant, Lauren Stockwell, Rita Arnold, Jamie Morin, Anna Apollonio, Sue Mello, Susan Reynolds, Gerry Botti, Bonnie Ginger, Karen - who brought us ferns but didn't leave her last name.  

Thank you to Nick Upham of the Boothbay Harbor Fire Department for agreeing to be our rain location. Fortunately, we had good weather this year and he didn't have to move his fire trucks out of their bays.  

Also, a special thank you to Officer Garrett French of the Boothbay Harbor Police Department who was on duty the night of May 31st - morning of June 1st and kept an eye on our plants that we set up on the library lawn Friday before the sale. 

Last but not least, a big thank you to all who came out to support the library and purchase plants. We went into doing an all-native plant sale with trepidation, but that was unfounded as our community's gardeners came out and enthusiastically purchased nearly every single native plant we had for sale, and many offered to donate plants and/or help with the sale in some way, so great is their support for "going native" in our gardens.  

Liz Lussier and Leslie Volpe 

Plant Sale Coordinators

Boothbay Harbor