Join us on Saturday, June 1 when the stalwart gardeners of Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library will offer a native plant sale from 9 to 11 a.m. on the Library Lawn (rain location: Boothbay Harbor Fire Station).

A note on native plants: This year’s sale will feature plants native to New England or at a minimum to North America. While people drool over those showy cultivars and plants from away, native plants are the workhorses that deliver. They offer essential habitat for the butterflies, pollinators, and birds we love. They also help to protect our precious watershed. And they aren’t as needy as cultivars. Native plants need less water, less tending, and can better withstand our climate’s sometimes extreme weather. A lot of flowering native plants are also quite beautiful!

We will also have some veggies and herbs for your edible garden.

For a comprehensive list of plants native to Maine and New England, there are some good books on the topic at the Library (of course!) and the University of Maine cooperative extension service is also an excellent source. The cooperative extension website also has information on the reasons to plant more native plants and how to safely transplant and share plants.

A note on plant donations: Maine gardeners are rightfully concerned about destructive pests like jumping worms and fire ants that can be spread from garden to garden. We are working hard to ensure that no plants sold at our Library Plant Sale will contain invasives. To that end, we are limiting all plant donations to donors who have agreed to follow best practices, such as cleaning pots, bare-rooting and rinsing transplants, and planting all transplants in purchased bagged soil. We are also accepting vegetable, flower, and herb seedlings started in bagged potting soil.

We’ll be setting up on the Library Lawn on May 31, the day before the sale.