Saturday, May 7, 2022, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
35 N. Main Street, Watkinsville, Georgia (next to the Oconee Bank)

The Watkinsville Garden Club will conduct its Annual Plant Sale on Saturday, May 7 from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. next to Oconee State Bank at 35 N. Main Street, Watkinsville.  Featured at the sale will be 16 different varieties of hydrangeas grown by Dr. Michael Dirr and his partners, Jeff Beasley and Mark Griffith, of Premier Introductions, Inc (PII).  These hydrangeas will be unique in that they are part of PII's 2021 breeding and evaluation program. 

According to Dr. Dirr, "the company’s breeding goals are moving targets and every year we hope to improve on the previous year’s successes. Goals include large showy flowers, repeat flowering through the growing season, strong stems to carry flowers upright, disease resistance, dark green, heat tolerant foliage, cold hardiness, and, yes, deer resistance. Crosses are made between the parents that give the best opportunity to produce progeny that inherit these quality traits..."

PII selected only 393 of the 3,745 hydrangeas they grew in 2021 for further evaluation, and the WGC had the opportunity to handpick 250 of the best of those 3,352 plants that remained for the May 7th plant sale. These plants represent crosses that will not have been observed in flower by anyone before. To read Dr. Dirr's description of how this process was done, click on Hydrangea Breeding.

The sale will also include herbs, vegetables, perennials, annuals, trees and shrubs grown by club members.  Cash or checks only.

The hydrangeas that will be available are crosses between two and sometimes three varieties of hydrangeas. These crosses are listed below, most of which have pictures of the flowers of the parent plants.