Galveston County Master Gardeners Plant Sale

The Galveston Master Gardeners are having their fall plant sale this Saturday.

The header above was excerpted from this very cool website, where each listed plant is linked to a description.

Unfortunately, that very cool website does not include any information about the location of the venue, so I had to look that up via GCDN.  You can see a map of the Wayne Johnson Community Center here.  And here's another. 

Having gone to one of these sales previously in south Harris County, my advice is this:

1. Identify from the website inventory which plants you think you'd like to purchase.  At least make a mental inventory.
2. Get there early, early, early.  Note that, because they usually preview plants, other people will likely have been given numbers so that they will be ahead of you in the check-out line. 
3. Be prepared for the possibility of pandemonium. 

A surprising number of people take their gardening (and Master Gardener plant sales in particular) very seriously.  The atmosphere can be brisk and intense.  People generally do not go to these things to browse - they go to snap stuff up.  Snooze, you loose. 

I'll have more on landscaping in the next week or so, as I eluded to in an earlier post.  Now is the time to deal with landscaping for the following reasons:

1. It's cooler outside so you can work without keeling over. 
2. We got over three inches of rain last Sunday so there's finally some soil moisture.
3. A lot of residential stuff was killed by the summer drought.  Much of the neighborhood looks crummy. 
4. Big-box stores and garden outlets are also having their autumn plant sales, typically 70% off.  It's fiscally foolish to buy at top-of-the-season (spring) prices and technically foolish also: the roots of many plants need unstressed opportunity provided by cooler weather to take hold before the next summer's heat is upon us again. 

More advice: if you're not an experienced gardener/landscaper, or even if you are, I recommend you exhibit an overriding preference for drought-tolerant plants.  Sunday's rain was great, but we're still in the worst drought in recorded history, and it's expected to continue.  And as of this post, League City is still in mandatory water rationing, and I have days where I feel that this might continue for all eternity.  That doesn't mean you can't have landscaping - but it does mean that you should start thinking WAY outside the subtropical box about your planting choices.