Campus Club Plant Sale Nets Record $12,500
Jeff Sibley
Good weather, a prime location, quality plants and a strong demand for 'MaterDirt® combined to make the Auburn University Campus Club's 2006 Plant Sale a phenomenal success.
Sales at the March 17-18 event topped $12,500, more than doubling the previous sales record of $6,000, set in 2005.
All of the money goes to the club's First Ladies' Endowed Scholarship Fund, which awards scholarships to students majoring in horticulture at AU.
"'MaterDirt was the hottest thing going at the sale," says Mary Lou Matthews, Campus Club scholarship chairwoman, referring to a composted manure product that is the patented brainchild of horticulture professor Jeff Sibley. 'MaterDirt hit the market in 2005 and is an ideal growing medium not only for tomatoes but for shrubs and bedding plants as well.
Among the shrubs and plants available at the sale, azaleas were the top seller, Matthews says. The majority of the plants sold were products of research at Auburn and at the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station's outlying units.
The Campus Club, whose membership is open to all AU employees and their spouses, as well as all friends of the university, held its first fund-raising plant sale at Kiesel Park in 2000 but moved to the present location at the corner of Samford Avenue and South College Street in 2005.
The high-traffic intersection was even busier than usual this year because the plant sale fell on A-Day weekend, an event that brings thousands of Tiger fans to the Loveliest Village.
"We'll be back, same time, same place, next year," Matthews said.