The Hyde Park Garden Fair, Chicago’s oldest community garden sale, will bring back hundreds of milkweeds, rare hot peppers, rose bushes and more to the neighborhood this weekend.
The 64th annual event will be held May 16 and May 17 at the fair’s new location in Kimbark Plaza, 53rd Street and Kimbark Avenue. Fair hours will be from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday.
Plants for sale will include native plants, wildflowers, container plants, hanging baskets, herbs and vegetables, perennials and annuals, trees, shrubs and vines.
“These are things you want to get and plant right now, so you can enjoy them all summer,” George Rumsey, one of the organizers, said.
Noting that the popularity of native plants has “really exploded” over the past five years, he encouraged anyone interested in these plants to get to the sale early. Native plants include milkweed plants, prairie plants and grasses.
Last year, Rumsey said organizers sold about 20,000 plants to an estimated 800 people.
Founded in 1959, the Hyde Park Garden Fair operates under the umbrella of the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference. Proceeds from the fair — both the spring and fall sale — go toward community beautification efforts, such as planting flowers in neighborhood parks, maintaining community gardens and providing grants to schools for horticultural projects.
This year will be the first spring sale to take place in Kimbark Plaza. The sale was forced to relocate from the Hyde Park Shopping Center plaza beginning last fall, when the University of Chicago announced that Mahari, a new fusion eatery, would need that area for outdoor dining.
Having already hosted the fall fair and their annual used book sale at Kimbark Plaza, Rumsey said organizers don’t foresee any issues with the spring sale.
“It’ll still be the same quantity,” he said. “It will be a different layout because the structure of the place is very different. It’ll be probably much more organized, because Kimbark Plaza is very long and very straight, so we’ll have everything laid out with plenty of maps.”
Rumsey said organizers are still looking for volunteers, especially on Thursday. That day, trucks arrive with thousands of plants from 15 different growers, some coming from as far as Northwest Indiana and Wisconsin. Everything needs to be unloaded, sorted, inventoried and priced. During the sale, the group could also use a few people to help check customers out. Those interested can sign up at hydeparkgardenfair.org/volunteer.
After the fair is over, Rumsey said they give the remaining plants away to schools, nonprofits and religious organizations. Any groups interested in obtaining plants should contact him in advance at crcrumsey@gmail.com.
“It’ll be odd not being in the shopping center; we’ve been there for so long,” Rumsey said. “We hope that everyone gets the notice that we’ve changed locations.”