Fulton Garden Club prepares for spring sale

Proceeds to beautify Fulton

With a mild winter behind us and a warm spring here to stay, Fulton residents will be working hard to make their gardens bigger and better this year.

That's what the Fulton Garden Club hopes, at any rate. The group is preparing for their biannual garden sale April 14, where members plan to sell plants out of their gardens and raise funds for the Club's activities.

Club president Betty Steinrauf says that club members dig up plants from their gardens each year around April, and again in September or October, to sell at reasonable prices to the public. The wide variety of flowers and foliage are green and ready to be replanted in their new owners' gardens, and Steinrauf said that the 50 to 75 plants the club hopes to sell will earn them between $350 to $450. While she isn't certain just yet, Steinrauf said that the good weather this season should leave them with plenty in store.

"It's kind of unpredictable because everyone's gardens are growing like mad," said Steinrauf, "so if anything, we should have more (plants to sell.)"

People who buy plants from the sale will do more than beautify their own gardens. All the proceeds will help cover the Fulton Garden Club's miscellaneous expenses, such as funding their yearbooks and the Junior Garden Club, and also will help the club buy their annual tree for Arbor Day, buy a gift for the library and provide favors for the Fulton Hospital around Christmas.

Even the unsold plants won't go to waste. Anything left over after the sale will be donated, Steinrauf said. Girls State has been one of their most steady recipients, but Steinrauf said she believes they're at their capacity for plants and the Garden Club might need to seek out a new recipient this year.

Steinrauf thanks Fulton Garden Club members Elma Hoffmann, Shirley Berry, Becky Guerrant, Kitty Comer and Linda Houston for putting on the sale each spring and fall. "They were doing it before I became president," she said, "so I can't take any credit for it, really."

The sale location moved recently from downtown to the Mattress Store parking lot off of Bluff Street near Dairy Queen, where it will be again next week from 8-11:30 a.m. Steinrauf says the exposure has increased their profits by about $100 due to the increased exposure from people leaving Mosers and Dairy Queen. With the anticipated increase of plants, she hopes that trend continues.

To help the tornado-stricken people of Dumas and surroundings, donations can be made to the Delta Area Disaster Relief Fund, care of the Delta Area Community Foundation, P.O. Box 894, Dumas, AR, 71639, or through the Arkansas Community Foundation, 700 S. Rock St., Little Rock, AR, 72202.