Plant Sale 2026 belongs to the community that made it happen!
On May 16 and 17, 2,800 people came through City Farm for SCLT’s 34th Annual Rare & Unusual Plant Sale, a new record. Plant sale shoppers took home more plants than in any previous year, which means more food growing in more backyards, balconies, and community plots across Rhode Island. As SCLT’s largest fundraiser, those sales directly support the programs that keep this organization running: the community gardens and urban farms, the farmer training and apprenticeships, the food access work, the youth workforce development programming, and the year-round educational opportunities hosted at City Farm, the state’s longest-operating production and demonstration urban farm.
Every year, Kathy G. Johnson‘s poster is how many people first know Plant Sale is coming. For more than a decade, Kathy, local artist, author, and lecturer has designed the iconic artwork that announces the Sale. This year’s poster centered on the theme of companion planting, an intentional choice that speaks to something larger than gardening: the compounding positive effects of a strong, supportive community. Beyond a digital design, a limited run of handprinted, signed, and numbered posters go to committee members, musicians, and Plant Sale VIPs. Each one is a collector’s item.
More than three dozen volunteers showed up across the weekend to set up tents, staff the register, and help shoppers find exactly the right plant for their light conditions, their container, their grandmother’s recipe. Many came through SCLT’s longstanding corporate and institutional partners, including Santander, Point32Health Foundation, Fidelity Foundation, and Care New England, whose staff showed up ready to work and left as part of the community. Every volunteer helped make this event feel like a genuine neighborhood celebration.
That celebration had a soundtrack. Circle of the Drum, 18 Wheeler, Raffini, Phil Edmonds, Chris Monti, the ‘Mericans, Shira & Tabitha Rose, Community Music Works, and Jake Haller each brought something different to the weekend, from a cappella to folk to storytelling, and the music carried across the farm all day, both days. It was, as Plant Sale Committee Chair and Board Secretary Candace Cooney described it, “joyous energy made tangible.”
Behind the scenes, the planning committee made it all possible. Some members have been involved since the very beginning, all 34 years of it. Others joined for the first time this year. Each member brings something the event couldn’t do without, and their commitment is why Plant Sale feels as alive and well-organized in its fourth decade as it did in its first.
The plants themselves deserve their own acknowledgment. City Farm Stewards Rich Pederson and Ellen Asermely, along with a carefully crafted schedule of interns, volunteers, and friends, grew all 20,000 plants featured at the Sale on-site at the three-quarter-acre City Farm. Supplementing that abundance, generous donations came from nurseries and growers including Issima Works, Blue Moon Farm Perennials, Briggs Nursery, Blithewold Manor Garden & Arboretum, Central Nurseries Inc., Jacavone Garden Center, Stamp Farms, and Homegrown, as well as from the many private gardeners who dug native perennials from their own gardens and donated them to the Sale.
Keeping volunteers fueled through a hot, sunny weekend was no small thing: deep thanks to Hope & Main, Knead Doughnuts, and Sandwich Hut, local and small businesses who gave generously of their goods, alongside Whole Foods, Walmart, and BJ’s, whose contributions kept the crew going from setup to breakdown.
Every year, Plant Sale extends beyond the weekend. After the sale closes, SCLT donates remaining plants to public libraries, community centers, gardens, and social service organizations across the state, maintaining and forging connections that reflect the same values the Plant Sale was built on. This year’s recipients included Movement Education Outdoors, the South Providence, Washington Park, Olneyville, and Knight Memorial libraries, West End Community Center, Galego Community Farm, Somerset Community Garden, Mt. Hope Community Garden, Roots 2Empower, St. Martin de Porres Multi-Service Center, The Gordon School, Groundwork RI, Peace & Plenty Community Garden, West Elmwood Community Plant Swap, The River Church, Farm Fresh RI’s Hope’s Harvest, Northern Rhode Island Conservation District, Amos House, Boston Food Forest Coalition, and SCLT’s own Youth Enterprise Farm.
To everyone who came out, volunteered, planned, performed, donated, and carried this work forward into their own communities: thank you!
The 35th Annual Rare & Unusual Plant Sale will be Saturday and Sunday, May 15 and 16, 2027. Will you be there?
Mark your calendars for SCLT’s most important fundraiser of the year: the 33rd Annual Rare & Unusual Plant Sale returns to City Farm on May 17 and 18, 2025. This beloved community tradition comes at a critical moment as we face unprecedented challenges from federal funding freezes that threaten many of our core programs.
