The 9th annual Bulb Give Away is set for Saturday, Oct. 1, but the four-hour event features much more than the 5,400 perennial daffodil bulbs set aside for Westcott neighbors.
The Westcott Neighborhood Bulb Project, an initiative of the Westcott Community Center, holds the yearly give-away day to encourage neighborhood residents to spruce up their flower beds by giving away free packets of 18 bulbs to the first 300 people who show up to claim them – so long as they agree to plant the bulbs where they will be seen by the street.
As part of the Westcott Neighborhood Bulb Give Away Saturday, Oct, 1 there will be a fall perennial plant swap/sale as a fundraiser for the Westcott Community Center Kids Club.
If you have extra perennial plants (and what gardener doesn’t?), drop them off, labeled, at the Westcott Community Center from 8 to 10 a.m. Oct. 1, or the day before. If you donate plants you get a plant for free!
For non-Westcott neighbors, the event includes food, live music by Larry Hoyt and Friends, a farmers market, vendors and a perennial plant and bake sale beginning at 10 a.m.
At 11, enjoy a free screening of “First Earth: Uncompromising Ecological Architecture,” a documentary the movement towards building healthy houses in the old ways, out of the very earth itself.
The film will be followed by a panel discussion including Syracuse’s Frank Cetera, president of Alchemical Nursery, who is leading the renovation of a blighted urban Victorian home through incorporating natural materials and building techniques such as natural plasters, homemade paints, earthen floors and insulation.
Bulb Give Away Day events will be held at Westcott Community Center, on the corner of Westcott Street and Euclid Avenue in the Westcott neighborhood.
This year, the Westcott Neighborhood Bulb Project has set aside 5,400 daffodil bulbs for Westcott residents, and by the end of 2011 program organizers expect to have helped plant 90,000 bulbs since the project began in 2003.
