For the past 11 years, the annual Spring Garden Festival & Plant Sale has been a marquee event for the Regional Environmental Council. It’s grown into a popular community event on the Worcester Common Oval with live music and family programming.

This year, the REC planned to do it bigger than ever, but for obvious reasons, that’s not going to happen. Instead, the REC is taking the whole thing online, allowing people to pre-order plants and other supplies on a sliding scale with pickup scheduled for the second week in May.

“Our priority is to get as many plants out as we can. If they're able to support us, that's great,” Grace Sliwoski, director of programs for REC. “If the low price point makes it more possible for them to get more and grow more food, that's great too."

Home gardening has been one of several hobbies to emerge as a popular time killer for people stuck at home during the pandemic shutdown. Recognizing this, the REC has expanded options to help people get started.

“We've seen that there's a big uptick in interest in people who want to grow their own food. Who want to plant home gardens and community gardens,” said Grace Sliwoski, director of programs for REC. “And there's been a corresponding backlog for ordering food online and being able to get the resources to be able to do that. We want to help meet that need.”

The REC’s online store, at regional-environmental-council-plant-sale.myshopify.com, has been live since February, and the REC plans to shut it off May 8. On the store are a variety of seedlings, from peppers to herbs to cabbage to tomatillos. As it was when the event was in person, the intention is to sell people seedlings which they then continue to grow throughout the summer and fall. In past years, online ordering had already been an option. Folks could order online and pick up the event. To cope with the COVID shutdown, the REC simply beefed up the online ordering tool and picked a location for pickup. Over the course of the second week in May, people who ordered online can pick up their order from the Youth Grow Farm on Orient Street. The sliding pay scale appears as a dropdown menu on the online ordering website. Rosemary seedlings, for instance, can be bought at either $2, $4 or $6.

“People can self-select whatever price point or combination of price points makes sense for their life,” she said.

The plants have been growing since February, at REC’s own greenhouse and at the Harvest Farm in Deerfield.

The money raised from the sale then goes to supporting community and school gardens throughout the city. In all, the REC donates about 8,000 plants to support the gardens annually. Now, seeing that there’s an increased interest in home growing, the REC is expanding to support those efforts as well.

“Really one of the best ways we can do that is to get them plants,” she said.

The store has been live since February, and SIiwoski said the community has already contributed generously. Many people have opted to pay the highest premium for the plants, and some of the more popular options, like sage, lady bell peppers, brandywine tomatoes and cilantro are already sold out. Sliwoski recommended folks interested in the plants that are sold out check out other local options for online ordering, like Community Harvest Project, the Greater Worcester Conservation District, Matchstick Market and Tower Hill Gardens.

“To date we’ve gotten really great support from the community, people who are opting in to pay at the highest levels to support us,” she said.