PROVIDENCE – Southside Community Land Trust will swing open the gates at City Farm and invite the public in for its 24th annual Rare & Unusual Plant Sale, on May 14-15. For serious gardeners and urban farmers in Greater Providence, this bucolic event marks the start of the highly anticipated growing season. It takes place from 10 am - 2 pm (with a preview from 9-10 am on Saturday for SCLT members), at the corner of West Clifford and Dudley Streets on Providence’s South Side.
The Plant Sale features hundreds of varieties of sustainably grown annuals, perennials, and fruit and vegetable plant starts – roughly 20,000 in all. Seeds are planted in the greenhouse in stages, beginning in late February, and transferred to cold frames outdoors and gradually to the open air as temperatures rise. Outside, flats are arranged on tables along winding paths among the farm’s knotty fruit trees. This year there will also be a separate selection of native plants that attract pollinators.
The Plant Sale is a community event, and a community effort. City Farm has been a working organic farm since 1982, where generations of South Side children have learned how to grow healthy food in small, urban spaces. Adults, too, have benefited from gardening workshops and farm apprenticeships within City Farm’s lush borders.
For the first time, in partnership with FarmFresh RI, SCLT will be accepting federal nutrition benefits for vegetable starts, giving an added 40% bonus for each SNAP dollar spent. At the end of the two-day Sale, plant starts that aren’t sold are donated to area nonprofits and to low-income gardeners growing in SCLT’s network of community gardens.
SCLT provides access to land, education and other resources to help people in greater Providence grow food in environmentally sustainable ways, and creates community food systems where locally produced, affordable and healthy food is available to all. It is located at 109 Somerset Street in Providence, RI, 02907. For more information, please call 401-273-9419, or visit www.southsideclt.org