Rain didn’t stop the NW horticulture department from hosting its third annual fall plant sale Oct. 2, offering a variety of plants for sale to students and members of the community.
Cameron Grant, NW horticulture learning lab manager, oversees the plant sale and said turnout has increased each year.
“We always try to keep new stuff to keep people interested in coming back, and the community supports us a lot too,” Grant said. “I would say 80% of our clientele are repeat customers that know about our plant sale, and then the other 20 to maybe 30% is employees from TCC.”
Although the fall sale is still relatively new, Grant said the spring plant sale has been ongoing for well over a decade.
The available plants included Texas native plants, house plants and mums. Proceeds went directly to the NW horticulture department to support funding travel to various events, including a trip to Columbus, Ohio, for Cultivate, the largest horticulture event in the U.S.
“The plan is to take students to that one just to show them how large and impactful the horticulture industry is because you really don’t see that around here,” Grant said. “You see our plant sale and everything, but you really don’t see where these plants come from and who really supplies the industry.”
The NW horticulture department also collaborates with local partners such as the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens, City of Fort Worth and Tarrant Regional Water District. Each year, students are taken to the botanical gardens to help plant flowers. Grant said the students in his herbaceous plants class installed the flowers found inside the butterfly greenhouse.
NW student Jacob Misa-Uli said the event was more than just a sale to him. It was how he was originally introduced to the horticulture program.
“I went to the plant sale back in 2024, and I was a business major at the time, so I was just trying to feel out what I wanted to do,” Misa-Uli said. “I bought a plant, and I realized how fulfilling it was for people and how fulfilling it was for me.”
The plant sale also helped Misa-Uli connect with a childhood memory. He said he remembers being around 4 years old and hearing stories from his grandparents regarding their horticulture experience.
“I’m Polynesian, so I have grandparents that did a lot of gardening in their villages,” Misa-Uli said. “My parents on my dad’s side are from Samoa, so they had a village where they did a lot of cultivating of taro leaves and plantains, stuff like that.”
Misa-Uli said he now wants to study herbology, specifically herbal medicine, and hopes to someday open an apothecary.
While Misa-Uli would like to explore herbs, NW student Alexandra Buckner said she’s interested in working with tissue culture in a lab.
“It’s essentially a form of propagation,” Buckner said. “You can take hundreds of cuttings off of it, grow them in a lab and turn one plant into 100. With traditional forms of propagation, you can maybe get 10 good cuttings.”
Students interested in learning more about the horticulture program and its career opportunities have options when it comes to certificate and degree offerings. The program offers level I certificates and an Associate of Applied Science degree.
David Cole, NW horticulture program coordinator, said a newer certificate in sustainable food crops is also available through TCC’s continuing education program, and everything is stackable to the A.A.S. degree.
For community members like nature-based educator Cheryl Potemkin, the plant sale has also become a staple in their personal and professional lives.
“When David started here and really started increasing the offering of natives that were available,” Potemkin said. “Through this plant sale and through my work, I learned a lot.”
Potemkin, who has been coming to the NW plant sale since 2015, previously worked with the Botanical Research Institute of Texas for nine years and has been involved in educating young children on nature.
“When I am working with teachers and educators who are looking for plants, I send them here,” Potemkin said.
