A crowd of over 300 people gathered on Friday for the annual Florida Museum of Natural History’s spring plant sale. Before the gates opened at 10 a.m. a line was already forming around the corner of Hull Road.
The event, typically three days long, was shortened to one-day-only since the museum’s closure due to an expansion. The event attracted plant enthusiasts and causal gardeners alike, all who wanted a chance to peruse the 220 species of plants up for sale. All of the money brought in by the sale goes toward the Butterfly Rainforest exhibit.
The event was organized by Ryan Fessenden, the manager of the Florida Museum’s Butterfly Rainforest exhibit. Fessenden has spent over 15 years working to share knowledge about helping out local pollinators with the Gainesville community.
“Tell me what your habitat’s like, and I'll tell you the best plant for that spot,” he said. “That's what I love about it. Maybe someone has a spot that's really shady and wet, and it's hard to find a plant for a shady, wet area. Well, I've got a plant.”
For the past 13 years, he has organized the museum’s annual plant sale and has seen how it has grown from a single stall to the large-scale event it is now.
“It’s been an exercise in evolution,” he said.
Originally, the event was a small booth as part of the museum’s Earth Day weekend-event in 2006. Since then, the plant sale has expanded, outlasting the original Earth Day event that hosted it. Fessenden said that while organizing the plant sale is a lot of work, he’s learned what to expect over the years.
The museum started a large-scale expansion in March and has been closed since then. The museum will re-open in 2026, but Fessenden said the closure made the logistics of the plant sale a little more difficult. He said the closure shortened the event to a single day, and would likely result in a smaller amount of funds raised to support the butterfly garden.
“The last spring sale, we did approximately $78,000 in sales, and that was a three day sale,” he said. “I expect for this one-day sale, it'll probably be between $40 and $50,000.”
Because of the smaller-scale event this year and the museum’s closure, Fessenden said he’s trying to organize ongoing online plant sales every two weeks. While the logistics are still being ironed out, he said he wants to set it up so that over the next few months plant enthusiasts can still buy new plants online.
His largest concern this year, though, was staffing, as the museum’s closure resulted in a number of lay-offs. Despite the additional complications, he said he’s still looking forward to indulging in his favorite part of the event.
“I love answering questions. I love identifying plants, I love being able to tell people about new things or different things, or just making people aware of something that they didn't know about,” Fessenden said.
A line of people stood at his booth waiting for him to point them toward the right plants for their gardens.
Some guests were only in the beginning stages of creating a friendly neighborhood for their local pollinators, like the Engert family.
Danielle and Ryan, and their two sons Arrow and Ethan, were at the event to get plants to bring home and start their own butterfly garden in Pensacola, Florida.
While this was their second year at the plant sale, Ethan, 20, was on a mission to build a real garden since he’s going into natural resource conservation, Danielle said.
Danielle said their family is looking to start a butterfly garden after seeing so much success with the milkweed they bought last year.
“We love bringing them into the little mesh cages, watch them crystallize, and then we release them,” she said.
Butterflies weren’t the only insects attracted to their garden last year, she said. One bug they’re particularly excited to see again is the hummingbird moth.
“We also get tons of frogs and lizards,” Ryan said. “All parts of the food chain that come together.”
They’re definitely going to bring home some milkweed this year, Danielle said. They want to attract more butterfly species native to the area, she said, and for that they need plenty of hosts for their flying guests.
While some were just starting their journey into gardening, others were seasoned plant-tenders.
Regina Bussing, 69, has been a regular of the annual plant sale for the past seven years. She brought a pulley-cart to carry all her plants home with her.
Bussing said she has a Certified Wildlife Habitat garden, meaning her garden has been officially recognized as providing essential resources for local wildlife by the National Wildlife Association.
She said she loves preserving insects, and that while butterflies are lovely, she cares about all the little critters that call her garden home. Bussing said she also enjoys being able to support the museum through the event.
“I'm very excited about the opportunity to get plants,” she said. “They're super well organized. They make it very easy to handle lots of crowds, and they have an exceptional selection of plants, including native plants.”