WSU Horticulture Club won the hearts of several Pullman students and residents last Friday with their Valentine’s Day flower sale.

From noon to 4 p.m the Horticulture Club sold a variety of flowers and succulents to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Combination planters consisting of primroses and hyacinth, pots of tulips and single pots of primroses were the main attractions for those who wandered into the greenhouses across from Ferdinand’s. 

Horticulture Club President Cora Borgens is a senior landscape, nursery and greenhouse management major. She said the club dissolved last school year due to the ongoing pandemic and lost all of its members. So when the 2021-22 school year started, Borgens took the role of president and started building the club back up again. 

“We are a club that is open to all WSU students; you don’t have to be in any specific major, you don’t have to know anything about plants coming in,” Borgens said. “The point of the club is to get students together and teach them things about plants and just generally have a good time.”

The Horticulture Club dates back to the 1890s, and they regularly have a variety of sales throughout the year. Borgens said there is a succulent sale on Terrell Mall every fall, a poinsettia sale near winter break, a Valentine’s Day sale and then a sale every spring during Family Weekend. The club also meets regularly throughout the semester.

“Normally we would also have pizza at the meetings,” Borgens said. “When I first heard about [the club] as a freshman, there was a joke that our club’s pizza budget is bigger than most clubs’ entire budget.”

Family Weekend is April 1-3 this year, and it is typically the club’s largest sale of the year, Borgens said. Hanging baskets of begonias, fuchsias, geraniums, Cougar red tomatoes and peppers will be available for purchase.

“The biggest thing that our club does is that all of our sales, all the money we get from our sales, goes into scholarships for students,” Borgens said. “So any work meetings, any sales that the students work, we keep track of those hours and then they’re awarded scholarships.”

The Valentine’s Day sale was a hit for many, especially Cameron Wood, a junior civil engineering major. Wood bought the “Pretty Princess” pink tulips for his girlfriend, Lilly Linder, a sophomore public relations major. The two met at one of Wood’s fraternity gatherings at the end of August and instantly hit it off. 

Lola Taylor, a junior wildlife ecology and conservation sciences major, bought two single pots of primroses to keep in her room until she moves back to her hometown in May and can plant them in the ground. She said she was more interested in the plant sale than the holiday aspect of it. 

“I just had on my calendar that there was a plant sale today and I forgot about it until the calendar notification popped up,” Taylor said. “Thankfully, I had money in my backpack.”

Students interested in joining the Horticulture Club can attend their meetings on Thursdays from 5-7 p.m. Much of the care put into the plants and flowers at their sales happens during the weekly meetings, such as germinating seeds, transplanting young plants and putting planters together.

“My favorite thing is just getting people together and seeing them come from all sorts of different backgrounds,” Borgens said. “For me, it’s almost like therapy, getting to plant things and, you know, play around in the dirt. So I hope it’s like that for other people as well.”