On a sleepy Wednesday in April, it’s bright and bustling in the dozen greenhouses at 78th Street Heritage Farm. Volunteers are scattered throughout the site working swiftly to propagate, count and pot plants in preparation for the annual Mother’s Day weekend sale.

This time of year, most everyone is putting in extra volunteer hours to prepare for the two-day plant sale, a huge fundraiser for the Master Gardener Foundation. Last year’s sale brought in more than $50,000, allowing the foundation to give out 19 horticulture grants throughout Clark County that included money to support Clark County’s Master Gardner Program through Washington State University Extension.

“It’s bigger every year,” volunteer Marie Ogier says.

Ogier and other frantic volunteers are unsure when the sale first started. The late ’80s? Mid-’90s? What they do know is that the sale started as a small single-day event in the parking lot. Since then, it’s grown into a massive operation, requiring all hands on deck and a crew of people directing traffic.

The Master Gardener Foundation gathers plant donations in the fall and the early spring. A “dig team” goes out to people’s yards to collect plants, and nurseries donate plants and seeds. Those plants are brought back to the farm’s greenhouses where they’re tended to until the sale. The plants that make up the Welcome to Washington sign are housed here, too, along with heritage plants for the Fort Vancouver Garden.

Some plants that are donated have gone out of commercial production, so they can’t be found at big box stores. Volunteer Fran Hammond gestures toward some unusual dog tooth lilies, or erythronium, that were donated by a nursery.