How botanical gardens get items donated

For letter structure and follow-up, see how to get silent auction donations and the donation request letter template.

The curator conversation comes first

Before anything is solicited or listed: what may be propagated, what may be distributed, what is patented, what is restricted by agreement, what is invasive risk, and what cannot leave the state.

Bring a proposed list rather than a general question. A curator can go through twenty proposed lots in twenty minutes and cannot usefully answer "can we auction some plants?"

Then the horticulturists

They supply the propagated material, the expertise items and the behind-the-scenes access — the three categories nobody else can offer.

• Ask each how many consultations, classes or visits they will do, and treat it as a cap
• Ask what is worth propagating and what is genuinely scarce, because they know and the development office does not
• Give them lead time — a cutting taken in July is a plant in October, and a rare specimen may need a year
• Ask the propagation volunteers too, and do not take the sale's stock without asking

The lead time point is specific to this silo and gets missed. Plants are grown, not requisitioned, and an auction planned six weeks out cannot include material that needs a season.

The order

3. Nurseries and growers

Natural partners with stock, expertise and an interest in the same customers. Many will donate unusual specimens they cannot easily sell, which is exactly what an auction is good at.

4. Plant societies and garden clubs

Rose, orchid, hosta, cactus, dahlia, native plant and bonsai societies are organized, passionate and hold rare material privately. They donate specimens, they bid seriously, and they bring an audience that already knows what things are worth.

5. Members and volunteers

A garden's membership contains keen gardeners with divisions to share, and its volunteers include people who have propagated for decades. Ask specifically rather than generally.

6. Garden-adjacent businesses

Tool retailers, landscape designers, arborists, garden centres, florists, soil and compost suppliers. Their customers are your members.

7. Botanical artists and photographers

A category most gardens overlook. Botanical art has a serious market, artists frequently work at gardens already, and the pieces photograph beautifully in a catalogue.

What to offer

The item listing, a mention to a membership of gardeners, recognition at the event and in the members' magazine, and a receipt. For a nursery or a garden centre that membership mention is a genuine placement to their precise market.

Timing

• A season ahead — curator sign-off, and propagation started for anything that needs growing on
• Ten weeks — horticulturists agree expertise items and their cap
• Eight weeks — nurseries, growers, plant societies
• Six weeks — members, volunteers, garden-adjacent businesses
• Four weeks — artists, photographers, general community
• Two weeks — catalogue closed; every plant lot carries size, hardiness, conditions, care, collection arrangements and any shipping restriction

Avoid plant sale season entirely for both soliciting and running, and prefer autumn or winter when the glasshouse is quieter and staff have capacity.

General information, not legal advice for your garden. Plant patent and trademark rules, phytosanitary requirements, invasive species regulation and any collection or seed-bank agreements you hold are all specific — your curator and counsel decide how any of this applies.

Committee structure: committee and volunteer roles.