Budding gardeners welcome at Manzanita Day

Manzanita’s Hoffman Center for the Arts will celebrate the town’s namesake this Friday, March 31, marking Manzanita Day with a plant sale and a presentation from gardener and author  David Perry.

The sale will feature a wide range of manzanita species, from groundcovers to specimens that will grow to become small trees in five to seven years. Volunteers will be on hand to make sure buyers are on a first-name basis with the plants they take home.

A range of native wildflowers will also be available to buy.

The plant sale runs from 11 am to 1 pm, followed from 2 to 4 pm by Perry’s presentation “Gardening in a Changing Climate.”

“Anyone who’s been paying attention knows all sorts of changes are afoot,” Perry said. “Climate. Politics. Health and nutrition. Gardens certainly feel it, and those of us who love gardens and partner with them feel it, too”.

Perry, best known for his books and lectures on garden photography, has an extraordinary vision of a future landscape that gardeners will inevitably need to embrace. His presentation will kick off the Hoffman Center’s year-long series, “Gardening in a Changing Climate,” made possible in part by a grant from the Nehalem Bay Garden Club.

“What gardens need is changing”, Perry said. “What communities of birds, mammals, plants and insects require in these ‘stress of change’ times asks us to rethink some of our beloved, ‘favorite things’ approach to gardening.”

In a Manzanita Day talk both deeply personal and philosophical, Perry will question how we have always gardened, what we missed along the way and what new learning awaits us as we reimagine ourselves and our gardens in a changing climate.

The Hoffman Center is located at 594 Laneda Avenue.