Albert's Greenhouse

In the past week, I've attended what are probably the two biggest botanical garden spring plant sales in the San Francisco Bay Area. Last Friday was the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley, and this evening was the SF Botanical Garden sale at Strying Arboretum. These were both actually pre-sales for garden members - the public sales were the next day - but it's fairly common knowledge that if you would like to have the best selection, you need to be at the members sale.

In fact, if you really want the hard to get plants, you probably want to show up a couple of hours early and stand in line. Having been blessed with a more-or-less 9-5 job somewhere down in the South Bay Area means that this is not really a viable option for me, unless I want to burn some vacation time in the hopes of standing in line during it. I also happen to hate standing in line. I showed up for each sale a little after the 5pm start time - early enough to see what plants were in generally okay supply, but not early enough to snap up anything that was both famous and rarely offered. One must remember that the people who really know what's uncommon are also the people waiting for hours at the head of that line with membership cards in hand. They are the competition for the really rare stuff ... not the general public that will come in the next day looking for stuff that will stay green.

There's been a few people who seem interested in a comparison of the sales. This is in no way a competition - there's no reason on earth you can't go to both sales ... or neither one. Though if you have a limited amount of vacation time, or expendable cash for purchasing a membership, you might be swayed to concentrate on one or the other. I'm also comparing the member pre-sales, not the public sales. Both institutions seem to be able to provide plenty of very nice, very interesting plants which are not easy to find elsewhere, at very reasonable prices - both to their members on Friday and the public in Saturday - but there are a few concerns that are particularly strong at the member sales which might not effect the general public sale the next day.

So ... on to comparison:

Parking: Strybing > UCBG
It turns out that the museums in golden gate park close at 5pm, just when the sale opens. I had no problem at all finding free street parking in the park within an easy walk of the Strybing sale. They also have valet parking for $10, if you're so inclined.
Contrast this to UCBG, with only pay parking, and a close parking lot that can fill up by 4pm. Overflow parking is plentiful, but quite some distance up a narrow curvy road, and serviced by slow and rather infrequent shuttles ... and if you have your own cart or wagon, it's not an easy fit onto the aforementioned shuttles. Paying for parking in the overflow lot was complicated by the fact that all the signs pointed to a single pay kiosk up a bunch of stairs that had been vandalized and was not working - luckily, there was another working machine across the street near the bus stop, but that wasn't particularly obvious from the signs. And of course, the machines will only take $1 and $5 bills - no credit cards... Parking at UCBG was, in a word, painful.

UPDATE 5/19/09: I've been informed by the management ( thanks, Paul ) that the close parking lot at UCBG is actually free during the sale, and that spaces tend to open up there on a continuing basis somewhat after the sale begins. My wife did notice that a little after 5:00pm is probably not the optimum time to arrive at the sale - too late for the really rare plants, and too early to find good used parking.

The Lines: Who Knows?
Probably somebody who showed up before the gates opened at 5pm. I didn't have a significant wait to show my membership card and get in to either sale, though I did cause some confusion by trying to get into Strybing with my UCBG membership card. It didn't work.

The Crowds: UCBG > Strybing
Strybing is slightly more crowded, it would seem. They also have a number of shopping carts and somewhat more narrow aisles, including several pinch points between the different rooms. More of the UCBG sale is outdoors, and the wagons seem less intrusive than the carts by far. Both sales are crowded, but Strybing is much less easy to navigate.

The Checkout: Strybing == UCBG
Strybing has more cashiers. UCBG has more lines that take credit cards, and a more organized line in general ... but seemingly fewer or slower cashiers. Both had plenty of boxes at checkout, and neither provided a particularly useful or enlightening receipt ... which means I have no idea or record of what the individual plants I bought cost, though I do know the totals from both sales. The fact that one is left with basically no way to tie price to plant once the price tags are pulled at checkout is irksome to me.

Plant Pickup: Strybing == UCBG
You can leave your plants across the street from the UCBG entrance while you go get your car from the far parking lot. Strybing has a similar attended setup in the back of the building. Both appeared to work well, though we did see the UCBG setup get backed up a bit. I imagine that the Strybing plant pickup could have suffered a similar fate later in the evening had we stuck around.

Pricing: Strybing > UCBG
I don't have particular price points, but it seems like Strybing was slightly cheaper than UCBG. It wasn't all that far apart, any obviously subject to quite some variation, but it seemed that there were a lot more low priced plants at Strybing, and some things like passiflora were going for a few dollars less.

Members Refreshments: UCBG >> Strybing
I bring my wife to these events. She has basically no interest in plants, but does have an interest in food, wine, and finding something to do while I'm out shopping. UCBG had a generous amount of professionally catered food available, and pretty much all the wine you wanted, all free for members. Strybing was charging $4 for a plastic cup of wine, and had a few appetizers available for free - but nothing remotely approaching UCBG. It appeared that higher level members and volunteers may have had access to nicer food, but not us commoner members. This sort of this is an issue to those of us who might want to justify a trip to the plant sale as a night out to other less plant oriented members of our family.

Rare Plant Availability: UCBG == Strybing
These are two plant sales with a lot in common, and a few differences. Neither sale had plants which I would consider REALLY rare in cultivation easily available. I suspect that there were a few of these things that were snapped up by those who came early and stood in line, but frankly the assortment left to those of us a few minutes into the sale while unusual would not qualify as exactly hard to obtain through other specialist venues or at the Strybing monthly sales and UCBG Plant Deck. I picked up an uncommon Raoulia at Strybing as well as a not easily available Chiranthodendron pentadactylon tree. At UCBG, I bought a rarely available named Lapageria and a generally hard to find Irid. Really hard to get stuff that is reasonably suitable for the climate like Deppea splendens, Brugmansia vulcanicola or Passiflora parritae were simply not in evidence. Even somewhat less uncommon things like Haemanthus sp., species Clivia, Brunsvigia sp. and so on were either poorly represented or not available.

Plant Diversity: UCBG == Strybing
The preceding is not to say that there was not a good selection of many genera that are uncommon and interesting. Both sales had excellent selections of California native plants. UCBG had an amazing amount of Lapageria cultivars and Bomarea, while Strybing had an excellent selection of cooler growing Tasconia Passiflora species and hybrids. Neither garden did terribly well in the tropicals, though UCBG offered Amorphophallus titanum seedlings and Strybing had a good selection of Begonias. Strybing is aided by several local societies and had the edge in Alpines, Rhododendrons, Bromeliads, Bamboo, Epiphyllum and Roses. UCBG had a significantly better set of succulents and carnivorous plants, and may have edged out Strybing in the South African section. Both gardens did very well in the Protea/Banksia/Grevillea department, and neither garden had a particularly good selection of South African bulbous plants, as I many have hinted at before. Both gardens offer pretty well similar selections of Ferns, for some reason.

Plant Quantity: Strybing > UCBG
There seem to be more plants available at Strybing - they carry a few more categories than UCBG seems to have the time for, though the plants in these categories are not really all that rare. For instance, you could buy tomato starts at Strybing ... not a big deal to me.

Silent Auction: Strbying > UCBG
Actually, I'm not quite sure about this one. The Strybing silent auction was bigger. Many of the plants were simply well-grown specimens and not in my mind quite as uncommon as some of the things offered at UCBG. I bid on a plant at UCBG, and I did not find anything that I wanted to bid on at Strybing ... but your results may vary. It seemed to me that the UCBG auction was more about larger specimens of uncommon things, while the Strybing auction was more about just very nice, large specimens.

Would You Go Back?
This was the question my wife asked me. Are we going back to the sales next year?
I know it will certainly be easier to convince her to go back to UCBG with the plentiful appetizers and free-flowing wine. That's a sure bet. But I'm dreading the parking. Moreover, I'm not exactly clear on whether I'll be able to add interesting plants to my collection in a civilized manner, without standing in line for a few hours and joining the mad rush. A friend of mine recently reminded me - it's not about the rarity of the plants you grow - it's about how much you enjoy growing them. I left both sales with a few very interesting plants - perhaps not the most rare, but certainly ones I will enjoy growing for years to come.

So Who's the Winner?
I know it sounds like chickening out, but the purpose of this exercise was not to figure out who has the best sale ... and given the above, it's not obvious. It depends on what you're into, and even then, it isn't clear at all. Say you're into passiflora. Well - Strybing has a wider selection of passiflora. But it doesn't overlap much, if at all, with the selection at UCBG, which includes a couple quite rare ones. The only way you're going to be a winner is to go to both sales. And that will make both you and the gardens that rely on your support winners in the end.