Save the Date! Plant Sale & Auction returns on Friday, May 16, 2025

Click here for the CT Hort 2025 Spring Auction flyer.

Connecticut Horticultural Society’s annual Plant Sale & Auction returns on Friday, May 16 from 6:30-9pm at Bethany Covenant Church in Berlin, CT, and will include an unusual collection of plants and shrubs.

Doors open at 6:00pm with a plant sale and silent auction of perennials, annuals, vegetables, herbs, shrubs and silent auction treasures from local growers, wholesalers, and businesses, and ends with a live auction of some eclectic offerings.

Horticulturalist Nancy DuBrule-Clemente will once again curate and serve as one of the auctioneers, alongside Jim Sirch and Kevin Wilcox. Together, they have well over 100 years of experience in the field.

Nancy DuBrule-Clemente is the founder of Natureworks Horticultural Services, an organic garden center, landscape design, consultation, installation and maintenance service in Northford, CT that she started in 1983. She is also the author of Succession of Bloom in the Perennial Garden: A Manual for Garden Designers, Including Shrubs and Vines Often Found in Perennial Gardens and A Country Garden for Your Backyard: Projects, Plans & Plantings for a Country Look.

Jim Sirch has been giving lectures on pollinator gardening and propagating native plants from seed for over 20 years. He is on the board of the Connecticut Horticultural Society and founded the Beardsley-Maritime Chapter of FrogWatch, a national citizen science program. A CT Master Gardener, Jim serves as vice president of the CT Hort Board of Directors and co-founded the Hamden Public Library’s Pollinator Seed Library. He recently retired working as Education Coordinator at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Kevin Wilcox is CT Hort’s resident horticulturist and has more than 30 years of experience in the field. An accomplished and sought-after lecturer, he has presented to plant societies and garden clubs on a wide range of gardening topics as well as specific groups of plants, including rhododendrons, Japanese maples, and conifers. He has served on the CT Hort Board of Directors and is the vice president of the CT Chapter of the American Rhododendron Society.

Those who attended last year will remember that the auction included dozens of shade plants from CT Hort member Judy King’s amazing garden. This year, there will be another round of shade-loving specimens donated by Ms. King.

The silent auction will include a framed image by garden photographer Ellen Hoverkamp. Ellen died at a young age a couple of years ago.

Proceeds from all sales are deposited into the Society’s Scholarship Fund and used to provide scholarships to Plant Science students at the University of Connecticut (since 1959), and Naugatuck Valley Community College (since 2011). In addition, funds in excess of our scholarship commitments will spill over to CT Hort Cares, our civic grants program.

Admission tothe Plant Sale and Auction is $5 and includes refreshments.

Bethany Covenant Church is at 785 Mill Street in Berlin, CT. For more information, visit www.cthort.org or email auction@thort.org.

Can you provide a donation? Click here for a letter that doubles as a tax receipt.

Stay tuned for more information on volunteering that evening.