Buffalo-style Garden Art Sale this weekend!

The third annual Buffalo-style Garden Art Sale is happening this weekend - Sunday, June 29, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Delware Park Lodge, 84 Parkside Avenue, Buffalo.

We have 39 or 40 vendors of arts and crafts related to the garden. To participate, you have to be a creator, or vendor of items inspired by the garden or nature. Most vendors are artists that create art for the garden - sculptures, furniture, obelisks, birdbaths, wind chimes, birdhouses, glass work and so on. But materials from which items are made are wood, steel, glass, stone, copper and more.

Purple Chair-ity's planter chairs.

I am one of the many organizers of the event. When I say many, there really are just six or seven of us. We have the full support of Buffalo's National Garden Festival (which really means we have the support of Visit Buffalo Niagara, our visitors bureau), as well as great planning support, and the space to use at no charge, from the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy.

Chair of the event Barbara Maze is either
setting up complimentary food for the
vendors, or stealing donuts. Not sure which.

The first year, in a panic that we would not have enough vendors, I had a stall selling handmade hypertufa planters, over sized copper leaves, and wine bottle torch kits. I won't have a booth this year, but my daughter will. She'll be selling her nature-inspired glass bead jewelry – and the planters, torch kits and copper leaves left over from the last sale.

Mark Witol metal garden art.

I'll be somewhere selling the Garden Walk Buffalo bookazines, as well as helping visitors and vendors.

In addition to the vendors, we'll have a "Plant Society Avenue." Area plant societies and the local Master Gardeners will all have tables and be answering questions for visitors, soliciting members and distributing information. Each plant society/group will also make a donation to a raffle basket which we'll raffle off.

And if all that is not enough - the sale is also taking place during, and in the footprint of, the Parkside Garden Tour. Dozens and dozens of gardens to visit right across the street from the Garden Art Sale.

Oh – and music too. Concrete Peach
will play from noon to 3pm

The vendors are coming to us from farther afield this year. One from Florida, one from Ohio, and a quite a few from the Rochester area. We're told we won't grow much beyond this until we offer the sale for two days, instead of just the one-day sale. Most vendors that travel find it too much work to travel, seet up, and tear down for a one-day event.

We do try to make it easy for vendors though. It's only $50 to have a table, along with a non-refundable $10 application fee. After that, we ask fro 10% of sales. So if a vendor sells little or nothing, they're not out big bucks. And if they have a great sales day, we benefit too. We also have volunteers that help them set up and tear down. On top of that, we provide two lunches per booth, bottled water and coffee and donuts in the morning. We also provide posters and postcards for each vendor to send out to friends and fans with their vendor packets. It doesn't sound like much but it's greatly appreciated by the vendors (we're told – or overheard!). Not all art festivals of this type offer anything close to these "amenities."

To promote it, there are currently banners up on the corner of Parkside Avenue and Rt. 198 (Scajaqueda Highway); Press releases have been sent out; it's been in the Buffalo News' coverage of all the summer's gardening events; organizer Mike Shadrack will be on WKBW's noon news weather forecast today, and a brief mention on their Friday morning show; posters are distributed; we're hoping for a Buffalo Rising online article shortly; TV gardening expert Sally Cunningham has mentioned it on her Sunday morning WIVB gardening segment; and we've been pounding it hard on social media (eNewsletters and Facebook).

Last year we kept count of visitors with a clicker counter. Including dogs and babies, we hit 1,500 visitors! Here's hoping the weather is good (so far we're looking at 84º and thunder storms), and we break that record.

This year's vendors included:

Anne Brierley Steps and Stones Hypertufa bird baths Ann Campbell By Ann Garden flags, handpainted vases Margaux Charlier Garden-inspired jewelry, hypertufa planters, posters, and wine bottle torch kits Kathleen Kosel Steel Jim Clark Copperman Whimiscal copper garden art/sculptures Carol Conwall Buffalo's Mark Novelty Buffalo card art that capture genre of floral, fauna themed art, natural stone coasters Lorraine Cummings Lorraine's Concrete Leaves Concrete bird baths using real leaves David Cyr Creative Copper Wire Handcrafted garden items-glass and copper, suncatchers Paula d'Amico Blessings by Nature Baskets and sachets made with fresh herbs Dave Davis-Queen City Nursery Cast stone garden statuary We do invite garden stores/centers. They are just asked not to sell plants (that's not what the event is about) and they cannot sell mass-produced art and crafts. Ron DeFazio Air plants and succulents displayed in glass globes Bonnie Finkbeiner Sticks and Stones Leaf castings, driftwood articles butterfly houses, rock candles Ronald Fox Fox's Lawn Furniture Cedar arbors/trellises planters, chairs, tables, swings Timothy Genco Metal garden art Debi Gravell The Cracked Pot 3-D clay pots with handmade flowers, garden signs, 3-D clay figurenes, glass vases Gerald Guenther Maple View Farm Handmade wooden garden and yard ornaments and salad bowls Cynthia Harter Garden Glass Flowers Antique colored glass garden art flowers   Kathleen Kosel Kathleen Kosel Steel Steel and glass garden décor and sculpture Constance Krueger Jewels of the Lake Repurposed solar sconces, plant markers, seed hull catchers, plant markers from, tablespoons, sea glass jewelry Alan Leising Copper Creations Copper/recycled metal garden sculptures, bird feeders, sprinklers Robin Lenhard Aremel Soaps Handcrafted soaps, scrubs, bug repellant spray, garden themed soaps, gardeners soaps

Marie and Peter Lusionek The Shabby Chic Garden Creations from vintage silverware windchimes, bird feeders, coat rack hooks, lavender sachets Richard Malone Atelier Rustic Garden trellises made from reclaimed materials Tuteurs French for "trainer"-climbing plants James Maloney Live Art Uses tufa rock to drill, chisel, hammer to reshape and then insert live plants Peggy Martinez Peggy Martinez, Artist Floral artist, acrylic and oils, watercolor and prints Meghan McDonnell Cement "pillow" garden steps, pavers. Flowers from recycled china Phoebe McKay Garden-themed ceramics – pots and trays Sharon Murphy Crescent Avenue Papers Handpainted note cards with native images Barry Nichols Heart of Franklinville Concrete garden statuary Catherine O'Connor Art Fx Glass Glass garden art created in kilns, garden windows, bird baths, wind chimes Creations by Heather Gillette Donna Paveljack Creative Glass Works Mosaic gazing balls from recycled bowling balls, bird baths, obelisks, glass garden stakes Lianne Reinhardt The Shabby Garden Glass birdfeeders made from vintage glass, garden chandeliers Bill Roberts D B Woodcrafts Handcrafted wood birdhouses from poplar or pinewood Jacqueline Sprague The Lady and the Snowman LLC Primitive and rustic gardent items, shed, metal and iron flowers, trellis, lath gates, stars Deborah Stewart Earthenware flower pots and decorative flower type bowls Suzanne Todaro Gleam and Glimmer Stained Glass Stained glass garden art, windchimes, votive, fairy doors, ground stakes Urban Roots Garden Center Solar-blown glass flowers, illumated garden stakes, flower metal art work, recycled humming bird feeders Heather Whitney Creations by Heather Gillette Sculpture in stained glass and wire and watercolor paintings Mark Witol Designer Mailbox Metal garden art Tom Zachman Tom Zachman Fused Glass Fused glass with steel, wood, copper