The East Dallas Community Garden‘s annual plant sale starts Saturday morning and continues Sunday. It is the 21-year-old garden’s 13th annual sale and its biggest fundraiser. The garden, on Fitzhugh Avenue near Bryan Street, takes donations from nurseries for the sale. Its biggest donor this year is Y-C Nursery Inc. The garden this year is selling caladiums in several colors, red banana plants, esparanza, spathaphylum, croton, bedding begonias, geraniums, Mexican heather, and two types of butterfly-attracting plants — lantana and pinta. Along with that, resident gardners have grown plants for the sale, including more than 12 varieties of basil and eggplant.
Most of the resident gardners are Cambodian and Laotian immigrants. Former Dallas Mayor Annette Strauss dedicated the garden in 1988 as a place where Southeast Asian refugees, many of whom were farmers in their home countries, could have space to grow food for their families and sell what they wanted. Gardners usually have produce for sale there every day. The garden is a good place to buy greens, longbeans, lettuce and bitter melon.
The East Dallas Community Garden has about 40 plots, and still reserves space for new refugees. Nowadays, many of them are the ethnic Karen people from Burma.
