The Meadow Brook Greenhouse’s annual plant sale will be held Thursday and Friday, May 22 and 23 from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the greenhouse, located on the east side of campus new John Dodge House. The sale will feature flowers for gardens or pots, herbs and heirloom tomatoes.
“There will be a lot of unusual stuff and a lot of stuff for pots,” Greenhouse Manager Matt Carlson said. “We’ve got the best crop we’ve ever had this year.”
This year, there will also be a Tudor kitchen garden on display that volunteers Pat Sagert and Glenna Long researched and designed. Calson said the garden is a replica of Tudor-era gardens that were used by chefs.
“It looked very nice last year,” Carlson said. “I expect this year it will come into its own.”
The greenhouse supplies flowers for commencement, convocation and university functions as well as the flowers for the landscaping around campus.
“All of the annuals and a good portion of the perennials come from the greenhouse,” said Carlson. “We’re really working to make this a premiere campus.”
Carlson said the credit for the greenhouse’s success really has to go to the volunteers who maintain the plants and gardens. He said many of them come to Meadow Brook’s Greenhouse as part of the Master Gardener cooperative extension program from Michigan State University and then stay to donate their time.
All of the funds from the plant sale will go to renovating the greenhouse, which was built in 1913, under the direction of Matilda Dodge Wilson, co-founder of Oakland University. The six-room greenhouse was originally part of the farm operated by the Dodge family.
For more information about the plants sale, call (248) 364-6171.