If marijuana were legal in Florida, an auctioneer joked, this might be a whole different type of event.
As the crowd at the plant auction chuckled, the auctioneer went on selling blueberries to benefit the Florida Nursery, Growers and Landscape Association.
The live auction was part of this weekend’s Kanapaha Botanical Gardens’ Spring Garden Festival.
Alexis Caffrey, director of the gardens, said about 6,000 people showed up for the 24th annual festival.
It is the gardens’ biggest fundraising event, said Caffrey, whose parents founded the botanical gardens. The money made from the festival is essential for the operation of the gardens, especially because it doesn’t receive public funding.
She said the gardens make about $50,000 during the festival if the weather holds up.
“With a $300,000 to $400,000 operating budget, that’s a big chunk,” she said.
The festival helps local growers as well, she said.
About 150 booths participated in the festival that included nurserymen selling plants, arts and crafts, food and booths to buy gardening supplies.
“For a lot of the nurserymen and growers around here, this is a place where they can showcase and sell all the things they’ve been growing throughout the year,” she said.
Ashley Jones, office manager at the Greathouse Butterfly Farm, said traveling to festivals like Kanapaha’s brings in business from people who tour their tent and learn about the butterflies.
Greathouse’s screened-in tent was filled with butterfly attracting plants that were all for sale.
Jones said the butterflies at her farm are local celebrities, having starred in various commercials and music videos, including the glowing monarch in Lady Antebellum’s “Wanted You More” music video.
Michael Tamayo, a 19-year-old UF political science sophomore, volunteered at the festival with his fraternity Saturday afternoon.
Tamayo, who is president of Phi Sigma Kappa, said members of his fraternity and other Greek students were storing the trash and compost.
Though he had never been to the festival before, he said he enjoyed supporting local vendors and checking out the variety of plants available.
Many others appreciate the event for the same reasons, Caffrey said.
“They are real plant enthusiasts,” Caffrey said, “and they come out here because this is Gainesville’s premier horticultural event.”
