Event helps educate gardeners
BUTLER TWP — Gardeners battled yet another cool spring day at the 12th annual Spring Garden Market and Home Show Saturday at Alameda Park.
“It's been a tough wet spring,” said Betty Himes of the Green Valley Nursery in West Sunbury. “One day it's hot, the next it's cold.”
Himes' son David Himes is the owner of the nursery. She said the market is an annual tradition.
“We enjoy it every year,” she said. “We make sure to get the first spot.”
Himes said the market is a good way to find a variety of locally grown plants.
“There are a lot of different things you won't find at the store,” she said. “And there's lot of nice people.”
Laura and Karl Kellar, owners of the Kellar Farms and Nursery in Forward Township, use the market as a way to display the numerous plants, trees and shrubs available at their nursery.
It's an annual event the couple does not miss.
“We've been here every year since it started,” Laura Kellar said. “It's a good way to get our name out.”
The cool Saturday was nothing new for gardeners, who have been battling weather all year.
“We had a brutal winter,” Laura Kellar said. “It has impacted everyone. It was just long periods of frigid cold.”
She said the weather has carried over to spring.
“Things just aren't popping as well,” she said.
Regardless of the unseasonable spring, the market once again offered plant enthusiasts a chance to learn more about gardens.
“If someone has a gardening question, the people here can answer them,” said Justine Brown, co-chair of the event.
Brown is with the Penn State Master Gardeners of Butler County.
The group put on a variety of demonstrations to inform people about common garden issues, including maintaining healthy soil, good bugs versus bad bugs, tomato blight and the decline of the monarch butterfly.
The event was host to 83 vendors from Butler and the surrounding counties.
Brown said she hopes the market will help kick-start the gardening season, which she said was about two weeks behind schedule due to the cold.
“We should be having warm weather soon,” she said. “People are just now getting excited about being in the garden.”
