RE: AIS: AD: club rhizome sale

The question:
    "Completely out of curiosity, when individual iris clubs have their 
rhizome sale,  do they accept a mailed in order from others not in the club?  
  I would mean that someone would send in a check for a certain amount and 
request whatever they'd have to send like a surprise assortment or something 
to be mailed out. "

Janet, I sympathize with your predicament of not being near a sale and wanted 
to let you know how several of our clubs locally run their sales.  My 
particular problem is that there are more sales here than my packetbook can 
stand!

JEFFCO (very small club closest to us) has a "sidewalk sale" at a local 
grocery store parking lot each year open to the public.  People are there 
every year at 7-8AM and we sell donation from members - both named varieties 
and "by color" of ones whose names are either not known or suspect (we 
contribute many in this category!).  Most of the iris-buying public is NOT 
interested in the names but want certain colors at low prices.  

Most are TBs but we also contribute Medians that are prolific growers!  Most 
are priced $1-3 with "variety bags" at 15 for $10.  Newer, named ones are a 
little more expensive.  Toward the end of the sale, when we are all hot and 
tired, the bags get heavier!  We always sell out and last year raised over 
$700 for this little group.

Greater St. Louis Iris Society, on the other hand, holds a public sale at the 
Missouri Botanical Garden every year, to raise money for the new iris 
purchases that GSLIS puts in the Garden.  This year it is July 27th.  It 
starts at 10AM and there is ALWAYS a line starting at 9AM!  We sell from both 
excess irises dug at the Garden and members contributions plus last year we 
had many left over, (both from the MOBOT sale and our Regional auction) so we 
replanted them at a member's garden and they will be sold.  

These are all named varieties TBs and you can imagine the amount of work that 
goes into digging, cleaning, labeling and sale of these.  These are priced by 
year (sorry I don't have last year's list here) with the most expensive ones 
being $15 down to $3 I think.  The last two hours of the sale we cut the 
price in half but by that time all the spectacular ones (we have pictures and 
slides of as many as we can!) have been sold.  Last year we sold +/- $4,000 
which helps support our program at the Garden.

We have not done "grab bags" but it sounds like a great idea and I will bring 
it up!

The third local group, KIRKWOOD IRIS SOCIETY this year will conduct its 
second annual public sale at the GREENTREE FESTIVAL in early September.  Last 
year we purchased, wholesale, a variety of RE, pink, black and orange and 
sold by color!  We sold out of the REs and had quite a few of the others 
left, which we planted back for this year's sale.  We netted about $1,000 
after the major purchase so this year should be better.  This is also a small 
group (25) so it was good income.

Probably more info than you wanted!

Rita Gormley
Gormley Greenery
Cedar Hill, MO
Zone 5, AIS Region 18


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