Lunenburg, Leominster, and Groton Markets! Plus new species available!

Hello, friends of native plants! – including a warm welcome to those who signed up for the newsletter at the Davis Square or Newton markets in June.

Today we have some exciting news about our market schedule for the 2025 season.

Lunenburg Artisan Market

Update Sun Jun 22: Sadly, due to thunderstorms and the extreme heat/humidity watch – as well as most of the other vendors backing out – we are canceling our attendance today.

If you were interested in purchasing plants today, please drop me an email at lise@redtrilliumgardens.com so we can arrange pickup.

We will be vending tomorrow, Sunday, June 22, at the Lunenburg Artisan Market (186 Mass Ave in Lunenburg, MA), 9am-2pm. (This is the same location as the weekly Montuori fleamarket, across from White Thai restaurant). Look for us in the “fresh market” section!

In addition to our usual selection of native plants, we will also be offering perennial herbs we grew last year. We no longer grow these for sale, so they will be at a steep discount ($2 for a small plant, $6 for a larger one).

If you plan to attend, be sure to keep cool and hydrated! There’s a heat warning in effect for tomorrow, with temps of 91 with a heat index of 109!

(Sorry for the short notice! As always, if you’re looking for the most up-to-date news, our Facebook or Instagram are the places to be).

Leominster Farmers’ Market

We will once again this year be vending monthly at the Leominster Farmers’ Market. This one takes place on the first Saturday of the month, June-October, 11am to 2pm, in Monument Square in downtown Leominster, MA. Currently we plan to attend all of these markets, with our first one being July 5, 2025.

Hope to see you there!

Groton Farmers’ Market

We are proud to announce that we have been accepted to vend at the Groton Farmers’ Market this year! This one is held Fridays, starting July 11 and ending October 17, at the Williams Barn Property (160 Chicopee Row) in Groton, MA.

We will not be attending every Friday, but we plan to attend 7/11 and 7/25 to assess the market (as we’ve not vended here before!) If it’s successful, we plan to attend every other week or once a month, depending on our schedule of other events.

Grow Native Mass Pop-up Markets

We’ve not doing any more GNMA markets until late summer/fall. We’re planning to attend pop-up markets in Lexington, Brookline, and Springfield, MA in August and September. Stay tuned for more details.

As always with our markets, you can order plants for pickup at our markets by emailing me at lise@redtrilliumgardens.com.

New Plants Available!

We are excited to announce two new-to-us species that are now available! These two species are somewhat special and difficult to grow, so they are being offered at the price of $10 for a 1.5 pint (4" square x 4" deep) pot.

Canada Mayflower (Maianthemum canadense). This is a low-growing groundcover especially suited to the acidic soils of the oak-conifer-heath woods of north central MA. It can tolerate full shade, growing to a max height of 8" tall (but honestly, I see it more frequently at height of 2-4"). It prefers damper conditions, but not fully wet. It looks lovely growing among mosses, partridgeberry (Mitchella repens), and teaberry (Gaultheria procumbens). A great find for your woodland garden!

What makes this one difficult to grow: like most northeast natives, it requires a period of damp cold in order to germinate. However, unlike many of these, it is what’s called “hypogeal.” This means that when it first germinates, it only forms a tiny bulblet underground. (Sometimes with a single minuscule leaf poking above ground). That bulblet then requires a period of warm, moist conditions before it will grow to maturity and put out bigger/more leaves. Functionally this gives it double dormancy, meaning that (in nature) it would require two years to emerge. We speed up the process somewhat by doing our cold/moist and warm/most conditioning on a wet paper towel in the fridge (for cold) or in a drawer above my computer (for warm).

In addition, the seed is hydrophilic, meaning it is intolerant of dry storage. Thus once these seeds are cleaned, they must be immediately moved to conditioning.

Note: while some of the ones that are available now are grown from seed, others of them were ones we transplanted from our property from an area where we were planting raspberries. These were cleaned well before being repotted in a commercial potting mix to prevent the spread of diseases and Asian jumping worms.

Eastern prickly pear (Opuntia humifusa). “Wait, we have a native prickly pear in New England?” We do! It favors the dry, poor soils of the Atlantic pine barrens ecoregion – so in the wild, you’ll likely only see them on Cape Cod.

This one averages 4-8" in height, and like most cacti, requires dry conditions in full sun. It would go great in a sunny rock garden – which is what we’re planning to do with them!

What makes this one difficult to grow: Like many cacti, these aren’t difficult to root from fallen pads – in fact, these were grown from pads shared with us by other MA native plant nurseries.

But here’s the thing. I don’t live in the “Atlantic pine barrens” ecoregion, and the soil here is heavier and there’s a lot more rain. I need to both grow these in a special sandy mix of soil, and I need to keep them out of much of the rain. They require a lot of special attention!

But the handling of these is where the real challenge is! These cacti have few spines, but what they have in abundance are something called glochids. These modified leaf structures, more commonly referred to as “bristles”, will attack you if you so much brush against them, leaving barbed bristles in your skin. If not removed, these can cause a rash; there’s also some evidence that repeated exposure can cause arthritis in nearby joints.

Working with these, I have to use tweezers/tongs and rose gloves, and then I still usually have to pick a few out of your hands. So, needless to say, these will also require your caution if you choose to put them in your garden. (Or you grow them inside as a houseplant!)

However, like most cacti, they thrive on neglect and can grow where other plants can’t! And once established, they produce stunning yellow flowers and edible fruits!

These our just two of our special plants – but all of our plants are special in our hearts ❤️ For our full list of available species, see our Buy Plants page, just updated today.

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That’s it for now! Hope to see you at one of out markets, and beware of glochids!

• Updates