I met Sandy four years ago when we were training to be volunteers at Care Net (now Willow Network). We became fast friends. I look forward to seeing her every Tuesday when she blows into the center and buzzes around the staff—vacuuming, scrubbing, and emptying garbage—while smiling and sharing words of encouragement.
Last week when I saw Sandy, she asked me if I needed any perennials. “You have extras?” I asked.
“Oh yes, I grow them every year. I sell them to make money for an orphanage in Ghana.” I was intrigued. I recognized this as an inspiring story I would love to share on my blog, but there was no time to ask questions; I had a class starting soon. I texted Sandy a few days later, and she invited me over to her backyard to see her plants and give her a proper interview. She chuckled when she saw me cutting through the grass with a notebook and pen.
“You’re just like a real journalist,” she said.
Then she joyfully showed me rows and rows of green, thriving field-grown perennials that she had recently dug up and planted in gallon pots. Coneflowers, daisies, phlox, black-eyed Susans, and several types of lilies, to name a few. She brought me behind her shed and showed me more rows of plants. “These are the ones that need to grow in the shade,” she said. Then she pointed towards a large garden plot. “See this garden? By July you will never know I dug up any plants because God just multiplies. When you give, he multiplies it every time.”
I jumped in with questions, and I was not disappointed in the story I uncovered.
Sandy’s passion for gardening started as a young child. Her fondest childhood memories are of growing flowers in a little patch of her mom’s vegetable garden and taking them to the county fair to win ribbons.
When her children went to college, Sandy began spending time helping Jean Phalen at her garden store, Everlasting Perennials. Jean taught Sandy how to landscape and how to grow and pot up perennials. Sandy did landscaping for about five years. When Jean Phalen sold her business, Sandy began selling her own perennials at garden fairs. Sandy taught her friend Nancy Noonan all she knew about perennial gardening. They planted eight beautiful perennial gardens on her property together.
Then Sandy started holding a sale on Mother’s Day weekend, with the help of her friend Nancy Noonan. The first year, she decided to donate ten percent to a missionary in Ghana. “The people in Ghana don’t value children,” she said. “A lot of children are left in orphanages, and they are not well taken care of. The money I raise goes to buy them diapers.”
The second year she had the sale, Sandy felt God was telling her to donate 50 percent of the proceeds to the orphanage. By the next year, she was donating 100 percent. That was around twenty years ago.
This is no small operation. They sell 500 plants each year. To do this, Sandy must maintain her growing license which needs to be renewed every other year at the cost of about a hundred dollars. And she spends three hundred dollars on the pots and bales of dirt. She and Nancy also invest hours of their time planting and tending to the plants. Not to mention the work involved in digging them up and potting them.
Sandy doesn’t have enough room to grow all those plants in her garden in Mohawk, NY, so she also grows plants at her family’s homestead in Gray, NY, a half-hour drive away, and Nancy helps out by growing plants in her gardens as well.
All their hard work comes to fruition on Mother’s Day weekend when they hold the sale. “We used to do a two-day sale, but we were selling out, so we now only sell on the Saturday before Mother’s Day. We sell all our plants for the same price—$5.00—much less than you will find anywhere else. We start at 9 am, and we usually sell out by 3 pm,*” she explained.
I am blown away when I think of the impact my sweet petite friend has through her plant ministry. Twenty years of selling 500 plants at $5.00 each. Think of all the babies in Ghana she has blessed with diapers!
Sandy’s faith journey: During Sandy’s first year of her marriage, she was home alone while her husband was working nights. She was bored, so she switched on the TV and watched a Billy Graham crusade. “It was so beautiful,” Sandy said, “it was the first time I ever heard that God loves me!” She saw the people on the screen going forward and kneeling at the altar and thought, “I want to do that.” Then he announced that the people watching from home could do it, too. So Sandy knelt down in her living room, repented of her sins, and asked Jesus into her heart.
“It changed my life forever,” she said.
Billy Graham told those who had made a profession of faith to start reading the Bible. Sandy didn’t own one and planned to find one at the store, but before she had a chance, her husband came home from work and handed her a Bible. “A man at work gave this to me and told me to give it to my wife,” he said. This small miracle strengthened her new faith.
Sandy started reading the Bible and couldn’t put it down. Soon a friend invited her to church, and Sandy became acquainted with missionaries. God began kindling a desire in Sandy’s heart to serve. Growing plants and selling them to support the orphanage ministry has been a perfect blend of Sandy’s passions—gardening and serving the Lord.
Sandy sums up her passion for gardening in this poem written by Susan Sutton:
“The Buried Life “
The seed that falls into the earth
Has not yet ceased to be;
Its buried state is but the birth
Of flowering plant or tree.
And shall we grieve the timely toss
Of flower from a stem,
When from the death that seems a loss
A vital fruit begins?
For nature knows that sacrifice
Leads to a higher state;
A death must come before a life
Can spring forth in its wake.
A cross must come before a crown
Can rightly take its place;
A yielded life, a laying down
Makes room for greater grace.
Yield wholly, then a willing heart
Fear not the buried life;
Embrace the cross in every part,
Shrink not from sacrifice.
See in each loss of fragrant flower,
Though thousands fall from stem,
A chance to find in death’s false hour,
The greater joy within
Resource: Sutton, S. (n.d.). “The Buried Life.” Worldwide Thrust. (Original work published 2000)
More about Sandy: Sandy is a retired school secretary and subs in the BOCES office. Besides her volunteer work at Willow Network, she teaches a Bible study at The Mohawk Homestead, a local assisted living facility. She is the town of Norway historian and the president of the Norway Historical Society. She lives with her husband and has two grown children and 3 grandchildren.
*Local friends, please stop by Sandy’s sale on Saturday, May 10th at 299 Robinson Road in Mohawk, NY! Be sure to come early to get the best selection!