Plant Sales Invite Visitors to Bring the Wildflower Center Home

by | Apr 2, 2026 | Magazine, Native Plants

Have you ever visited the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’s gardens and felt inspired to incorporate some of the same varieties of native plants featured there into your home garden? The Center’s plant sales offer that very opportunity.

For more than 25 years, the Wildflower Center’s seasonal plant sales have provided visitors the chance to shop for plants in a beautiful and inspiring setting: the very nursery in which many of the plants are grown from seed.

“Sometimes you’ll get inspiration while you walk the gardens, and sometimes we’ll have those plants for sale,” Nursery Manager Lauren Groce says. “Perusing the garden, seeing what you like, and coming to the sale to see if we have it … I think that’s a really fun way to experience the Wildflower Center.”

The plant sales offer an extensive variety of Texas natives, including flowering perennials, grasses, vines, shrubs and trees for both shady and sunny gardens. All sales directly support the Center’s mission to inspire the conservation of native plants.

Plants are potted in a range of sizes (four-inch, one-gallon, and five-gallon containers) and are organized into sections: sun plants, shade plants, and trees and shrubs. Within each section, plants are arranged alphabetically by botanical name. Each plant has signage with information such as light requirements, moisture requirements, and other relevant facts, along with handy QR codes for finding and bookmarking more information on your phone.

The availability of plants at each sale varies depending upon growing conditions, seasonality and gardening trends. The spring sale features many spring-blooming plants, such as bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis) and spiderworts (Tradescantia sp.), along with show-stopping vines like wisteria (Wisteria frutescens). The fall sale includes milkweeds (Asclepias sp.), fall asters (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium), plateau goldeneyes (Viguiera dentata), shrubby boneset (Ageratina havanensis), and more.

The plant sale does sell out of some plants on occasion, so there’s no better time to become a member. Joining the Wildflower Center gets you exclusive access to the sales every Friday ahead of the general public. Milkweeds tend to be some of the most popular plants, along with more unusual plants like gayfeather (Liatris sp.), and have sold out in previous years. A list of plants is published ahead of time and updated nightly, so checking the list, coming early, and being flexible are good ways to approach the shopping experience.

Fortunately for visitors, Wildflower Center staff and a team of volunteers at the plant sales are expert guides, eager to field interesting questions and connect guests with less-common varieties of plants that may be just right for them.

“We like to focus on plants that you aren’t readily going to find in the normal nursery trade,” Groce says. “Texas has a lot of native plants that most people haven’t heard of, and at the Center, we want to share that knowledge. There are so many native plants that can do really well in anyone’s home garden.”

The Wildflower Center nursery’s top priority is to grow eye-catching natives for the Center’s own gardens, but they also grow plants for the plant sales and for the Science and Conservation team. Propagation Specialist Susan Prosperie and Nursery Technician Anna Appelquist focus on seed preparation, plant maintenance and more to keep the nurseries thriving. The vast majority of plants found in the nurseries are sourced from the Wildflower Center gardens, whether through seeds collected or cuttings from plants.

The selection and good value of the plants, along with the expertise of the growers, set the Wildflower Center’s plant sales apart from other plant-buying opportunities. Groce sees in these plant sales the opportunity for education and a source of inspiration:  “At the plant sales, we’re teaching people about the beauty and resiliency of native plants, so they can take that back to their own home and be able to see that beauty… and their neighbor sees that and could be inspired as well.”

Know Before You Go

  • The 2026 Spring Native Plant Sale runs April 3 – 26: Fridays* – Sundays; 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. (Last entry at 12:30 p.m.). *All Fridays are exclusively for Wildflower Center members. Reservations are required for the first two members-only Fridays. Member walk-ups will be admitted, if space allows.
  • Check out the plant list ahead of time. It’s updated nightly to reflect the latest availability.
  • Bring questions! If you are looking for plants for a particular area, take some photos of the space and make a note of the light conditions. Experts at the sale will be ready to discuss and provide ideas.