Closing for the season October 6th! Last markets, open house, and more!

Wow, I can hardly believe it’s almost time to close for the season! My first year in business has just flown by. (And yet somehow I was potting up seedlings up until three days ago… many lessons learned for next year!)

Closing for the season October 6th

I was planning on staying open through the end of October with the final Ashby market on the 27th, but then I realized that a) other native plant nurseries are already closing, and b) the average date of first frost around here is October 5th, and I don’t want to sell folks plants that are might be frost-killed before they have a chance to get established.

(While most of what we sell is herbaceous perennials that should survive the winter, the root system still has to be strong enough to support the greenery dying back. So if you have plants from us that you haven’t put in the ground yet… do that now, or make a plan for overwintering them inside or under protection outside).

What will we be doing in the off season? We’ll spend some time in October collecting seeds/fruits, purchasing commercial seed, and coming up with a propagation plan for 2025. (Btw, if you have property in the north central MA area and you’d be willing to let me collect seeds on it, please reach out!) We’ll be traveling through much of November – the quietest month of the year for a nursery! – and then in December we’ll begin winter sowing, which will take us right through February. February and March will be starting plants indoors (mostly annuals and species that don’t require cold moist stratification), and April we expect will be the start of our markets! So there’s no rest in the nursery business, really!

We’re also hoping to post more of our native plant showcases (eg. Hepatica americana) during the winter, when we’re not digging in the dirt most of the day! I really enjoy doing these but I just haven’t had the time nor energy during the growing season.

Last markets

Given this schedule, this means we are canceling our last two Ashby Farmers Markets (originally scheduled for Oct 13th and 27th). Our last two markets will thus be:

• Lexington Farmers’ Market: Tuesday. October 1, 2024, from 2pm to 6:30pm, at Worthen Road Practice Field, Lexington, MA. This is another pop-up market with Grow Native Massachusetts, and we’ll be joined by Blue Stem Natives, Oakhaven Sanctuary, and Hilltop Natives!

• Leominster Farmers’ Market: Saturday, October 5th, in Monument Square, Leominster, MA, from 11am to 2pm.

As always, you can reserve plants to be picked up at these markets. Check out our Buy Plants page for our full inventory, and email your reservation to lise@redtrilliumgardens.com.

We are also planning an…

Open House/Sale October 6th

We’ll be opening up our nursery/backyard in Lunenburg, MA to our customers on Sunday, October 6th, 2024, from 11am to 5pm. During this time you can visit with us, buy discounted plants, and tour our gardens.

We will be marking down our plants by 40% for the sale, with native perennials in pint pots at $3 and native perennials in 1-2 quart pots at $6. We will also have a small selection of native annuals, overstock plants, “zoigls”, and even some non-native annuals and perennials – prices TBD.

Since we still don’t want to broadcast our physical address to the world – and our place can be hard to find, anyway! – if you’re interested in attending, please email lise@redtrilliumgardens.com for the address, so that I know you’re a real human being. I’ll also be creating a Facebook event you can mark yourself as interested in. (Have you followed our Facebook page yet? How about Instagram?)

Additionally, anyone who attends our open house will receive a $5 coupon towards a purchase in 2025!

That’s all for today! Thanks for making our first year a success 🙏 I hope to see you at one of our last events of the season – and if not, see you next year!

__

Featured image: White wood aster (Eurybia divaricata) at my home in Lunenburg, September 2024. Photo by me, Lise Fracalossi.

• Updates