It takes many volunteers to stage the biggest plant sale in Texas, Mercer Arboretum & Botanic Gardens' March Mart.
Growers, sellers, organizers and stagers all play a part in making the sale possible, but none of it matters if buyers don’t know what they’re looking at or how to take care of the plants they purchase when they bring them home.
A Kingwood couple spends hundreds of hours a year making sure plants are correctly identified with botanical and common names as well as optimum growing conditions in the Houston area. March Mart is from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 26 and March 27 at the Arboretum, 22306 Aldine Westfield Rd.
Irma Ojeda and husband Martin Adams, who live in Kingwood Lakes, explain that the information is used to guide shoppers through row upon row of plants at the sale, and it is also included in an annual Plant Guide for the Houston Area, which sells for $10.
Additionally, each year, there are changes in the plant lineup at March Mart, and all of the information is entered into an invaluable database that includes 6,000 plants -- the same number of people who typically come through the gates during the two-day sale.
While many of the buyers study the guide in order to narrow in on plants on their wish list, others browse at a more leisurely pace.
“If you don’t have a sign, they go right by those plants,” says Ojeda, a Texas Master Gardener.
And because questions about growing things in the Houston area do not stop after March Mart, the database provides answers to landscaping queries fielded by volunteers throughout the year.
Moreover, buyers don’t have to worry about picking up a plant with a tag that reflects conditions somewhere else, Ojeda says. “Sometimes, what is an annual in Boston may be a perennial in Houston.”
Hence the need for reliable, customized information carefully checked by Ojeda, who previously worked offshore for an oil company, and Adams, a Continental Airlines pilot.
“It’s been helpful in widening our knowledge base,” Adams says. “A lot of the growers love to talk about plants, and we’ll have a conversation and get firsthand information from them.”
While the two downplay their roles, Linda Gay, director of the Arboretum, has quipped that they are “the dynamic duo of botanical nomenclature.
“Their diligence and persistence on entering Latin names, common names and plant description information is invaluable to us,” she says.
The couple finds satisfaction both in working and walking among the plants on the grounds and in helping to spread a love of gardening and the outdoors.
Adams notes that Mercer is an ever-changing plant laboratory that benefits a wide range of people -- from families celebrating Quinceaneras, to special-education students who volunteer there, to Harris county inmates who are enlisted to maintain the grounds. And people such as him.
Amid the long lines of wagons piled full of plants, the 2,800 transactions, and $200,000 in sales, volunteers like the Kingwood couple see the seeds of another Southeast Texas spring being planted.