One might expect people to purchase kettle corn or funnel cakes from a red-and-white striped tent. But the one set up at Independence Park on Friday and Saturday wasn’t hosting a carnival, and the patrons weren’t purchasing fried treats — but rather an assortment of unique plants.

The stand was the central attraction at the Lincolnwood Garden Club of Evanston’s annual Garden Fair, where residents shopped from a variety of plants grown by club members. 

Although a yearly event, the fair was much more than a year in the making, according to Mary Anne Diehl, the garden club’s president-elect. Some of the plants featured at the fair, she said, have been maturing in members’ gardens for several years. That makes them “unique,” Diehl said.

“You buy a plant at Home Depot — it is this big,” Diehl said, holding her fingers about 4 inches apart. “You buy a plant here — it’s this big and it’s flowering,” she said while gesturing toward a large Hosta plant sitting in a red wagon with leaves spilling over the sides. 

The Garden Fair has marked the precipice of summer in Evanston for more than 70 years, but the Lincolnwood Garden Club has managed it for about the past 13, Diehl said. But it’s difficult to put an exact anniversary on the fair, she said, since multiple garden clubs collaborated to host early iterations. Seven decades later, however, the Lincolnwood Garden Club is the last organization participating. 

Diehl said gardeners have become more difficult to come by over the years, especially because of the older demographics who make up the most avid practitioners. 

However, the COVID-19 pandemic actually breathed new life into gardening, Diehl said. Sitting at home made many people more aware of their gardens, she said, and the break from work gave them the time to pick up shovels or hoses.

“Gardening has come back,” Diehl said. “People love gardening.”

She added the fair has built up a core of committed plant caretakers, many of whom lined up in the rain Friday morning to pick their choice of flora. By the time first-time fair attendee Kim Shanks arrived around noon, the plant selection had thinned.

The decrease in available plants reduced the long lines to a trickle of people perusing the selection and left Shanks, who moved to Evanston in August, a bit “underwhelmed.”

Shanks said she was shopping for houseplants to fill her new home. But most items sold at the Garden Fair were outdoor plants. 

While taking care of indoor and outdoor plants is similar, Diehl said gardening is more of a hobby, akin to knitting or running. She said it helps clear her mind.

“You’re digging, you’re planting and you’re moving things around,” Diehl said. “Inside … you’re not getting your hands dirty.”

Like a hobby, gardening can be a bonding experience, she said, especially between family members.

Many people at the fair, she said, learned to garden from their parents. Even the plants themselves can serve as a link to past generations, Diehl added.

“I have a rose in my garden that was my mother’s,” Diehl said. “Every year, it blooms, and I think about my mother.”

Although plants were the fair’s focus, gardening wasn’t its only aspect. Local artist Daniel Conta sold abstract paintings from a nearby tent and fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in technology and social behavior Gus Umbelino collected sign-ups for Evanston’s new participatory budgeting initiative.

One of those enlistments came from Communication sophomore Sophie Teitler, who had wandered into the fair in search of plants. She didn’t leave with a plant, but left her name on Umbelino’s sign-up sheet instead.

“I support the cause,” Teitler said of participatory budgeting. “I don’t know much about the community, but I hope to learn more.”

Building connections with the surrounding community has become part of the ethos behind the fair. 

Diehl said all proceeds from the fair go toward funding gardening-related grants for local nonprofits or schools.

“We’re a community garden. We’re a community organization,” she said. “We want to give back to the community.”

Email: [email protected]

Twitter: @charcole27

Related Stories:

— Evanston Garden Fair seeks to foster community through plants and grants

— Finding your “value magic”: Black Girl Magic Book Club connects elementary school students with protagonists of color

— Everything Evanston: Edible Evanston’s growing gardening efforts