25th annual Camas Plant & Garden Fair returns to downtown Camas this Saturday

Free event will feature 20 vendor experts, huge variety of plants, trees, flowers, vegetable starts and garden accessories

By Kelly Moyer
May 9, 2024 1:00 pm
Camas, Latest News, Life

Pam Richey Curtis, owner of Belle Flower Farm, arranges flowers at the 2022 Camas Vintage & Art Faire. (Photo courtesy of Belle Flower Farm)

The 25th annual Camas Plant and Garden Fair will take over downtown Camas this weekend, with a mix of plants, vegetable starts, trees, herbs, garden art, flowers, gardening experts, live music and child-friendly activities.

Held the day before Mother’s Day, the annual fair is one of the largest of its kind in Clark County and known to draw hundreds of visitors, rain or shine. This year’s fair will take place from from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 11, throughout the streets of historic downtown Camas.

“It’s huge,” Eloyce O’Connor, co-owner of the Brush Prairie-based Garden Delights Herb Farm, said of the fair. “Camas has the largest plant sale, aside from the Master Gardeners’ sale at the Heritage Farm … and the people are there to buy plants.”

O’Connor, along with her daughter and business partner, Erin Harwood, has been a vendor at the Camas Plant and Garden Fair for the past decade.

“It’s nice. Downtown Camas has this kind of cozy community, small-town feel, and people come no matter what,” Harwood said, remembering a particularly rainy year when she and her mother thought the fair might be negatively impacted by the weather. “We had rubber boots and raincoats on, and thought it was going to be horrible, but people came anyway.”

O’Connor and Harwood have been growing herbs in the Hockinson area since 2005, and currently grow around 100 different types of herbs. Their Garden Delights Herb Farm sells fresh and dried herbs, a dozen culinary herb blends, various herb salts and teas, herbal bath and body products and even an array of herbal flea products for furry family members. Though the mother-daughter team sells the majority of their products through their website (gardendelightsfarm.com) and at local stores such as Urban Basics in Vancouver, they also attend a few plant and garden fairs each year and offer “porch pickups” at the farm for local customers who have purchased products online.

Harwood, a community herbalist who earned her master’s degree in environmental science from Portland State University, also runs her own business, Plant Magic with Erin, where she offers classes and plant walks dedicated to her love of herbs and herbal remedies.

Both Harwood and O’Connor — who have taught several herb-related classes at the Camas Public Library — will be on hand during the May 11 Camas Plant and Garden Fair to talk with visitors about growing, harvesting, preserving and utilizing herbs throughout the year.

Though many visitors to the Camas plant fair already have a good idea of which herbs they might want to grow, O’Connor said it’s always fun to talk with people about their gardens and help them find new or different herbs.

“We have discussions about what herbs might work … and help them put together what they’re looking for,” O’Connor said. “And we always have a little segment of people who are really new to herbs, so we tell them about some really great herbs that are easy to grow.”

Even people who have little gardening space can find success growing herbs, Harwood added.

“Lots of people don’t have much space anymore, but many herbs grow in containers,” Harwood said. “And container gardening is relatively easy.”

The Garden Delights Herb Farm booth — which can be found in front of the Camas Hotel on the corner of Northeast Fourth Avenue and Northeast Cedar Street during the fair — is one of 20 booths that will have a “yellow sun” sign, showing it is one of 20 booths with designated “vendor experts” ready to help shoppers bolster their gardening knowledge.

Another vendor expert ready to bring her skills to this year’s Camas Plant and Garden Fair is Pam Richey Curtis, owner of the Vancouver-based Belle Flower Farm (belleflower.farm), which specializes in floral design and bespoke bouquets and offers flower subscriptions for businesses and individuals.

According to the Downtown Camas Association (DCA), which organizes the annual plant and garden fair, many Camas event goers may recognize Curtis and her Belle Flower booth from another popular downtown Camas festival — the Camas Vintage and Art Fair, held every August.

“Curtis has been a favorite Camas Vintage and Art vendor,” the DCA states on its 2024 Camas Plant and Garden Fair website (cwplantfair.org). “(Curtis) will bring her curated selection of vintage vessels planted with homegrown succulents, as well as an array of gardening books, vintage tools and patio styling items (to the May 11 fair.)”

LIke the mother-daughter duo from Garden Delights, Curtis said she enjoys attending downtown Camas events as a vendor.

“This will be our first year to show at the Plant and Garden Fair,” Curtis said. “I’m really looking forward to it. … I love our connections to Camas. We have a great relationship with Arktana and have come there for First Friday events. And we have participated several times in the Vintage and Art Fair, which is a great blend of art and storied items, so that has been really fun.”

Curtis — who named Belle Flower Farm for her grandmother, Laura Belle, who opened her own flower shop, Highland Florist, in Vancouver in the 1950s — grew up steeped in flowers and beauty.

“Belle Flower Farm is a nod to childhood memories playing in (Laura Belle’s) garden, pretending to marry under the rose arbor and looking for treasures in the greenhouse,” Curtis states on her business website.

She has taken her love of gardening and combined it with a background in art and design to form Belle Flower Farm.

“We do a lot of pop-ups throughout the community, at wineries and markets, and I try to never do the same thing twice,” Curtis said when asked what type of products and floral arrangements Camas shoppers might find at her booth on May 11. “We’ll have things that can help style a back porch for a party or a front porch for a spring gathering — loads of plants and flowers and garden accessories. And I’m planning to bring new plant markers to Camas. … We’ll have succulents and olive topiaries — things that are super easy to care for and that can be brought out to (help decorate) a seating area.”

Curtis said she also loves the educational piece of her business.

“We offer garden consultations. Sometimes it helps to have someone walk through and see your garden with fresh eyes,” Curtis said. “To see how you use your space and what you would like to get from your garden.”

For people planning to attend the May 11 plant and garden fair in downtown Camas, Curtis recommends taking photos ahead of time.

“If you’re working on a particular part of your garden, take a couple photos on your phone and — maybe of the front porch or vegetable garden or whatever you’d like to work on,” Curtis said. “Then, you can reference the photos when you’re at the fair, talking to the vendors.”

The 25th annual Camas Plant and Garden Fair will feature dozens of vendors, including 15 new vendors, and 20 “vendor experts,” and a wide variety of plants, plant starts and garden accessories.

The vendor expert booths will feature “yellow sun” signs and an expert vendor list can be found online at cwplantfair.org/vendors. Included on the list of vendor experts is:

Downtown Camas’ own EatWell Camas, which will provide community gardening information and children’s activities, as well as information about the Olla watering systems;

• The Fort Vancouver Rose Society, which will provide education about caring for and pruning rose bushes;

• The Washougal-based Good Year Farm, which specializes in native Pacific Northwest plants and will discuss how to grow and care for plant species such as camas, trillium and western columbine.

• Lacamas Lavender Farm, with information about growing lavender plants and other herbs, succulents, vegetable starts and container gardens;

• The Camas-based One Earth Botanical plant nursery, which will provide expert tips on growing hardy perennials, plants, trees and shrubs;

• Rhythm Seed Farm, a Portland nonprofit founded in 2020, that grows vegetable and flower seeds, donated half of the seeds it grows to low-income BIPOC (Black, indigenous and people of color) communities and states on its website (rhythmseedfarm.org) that it is “committed to improving local food security, educating the next generation of seed savers and improving our environment from the ground up;”

• Sunset Views Firs and Nursery, which will be on hand to discuss peonies and landscape plants such as hostas and crocosmia; and

• Sweet Bloom Farm, with its dahlia plants, heirloom tomato and pepper starts, flowers seeds and summer annual flower starts.

The fair also will feature a “Kid’s Zone” from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. along Northeast Dallas Street between Northeast Third and Northeast Fourth avenues, with a free petting zoo hosted by the 4-Seasons 4-H Club; an obstacle course hosted by My Gym; a rubber duckie flume courtesy of the Camas-Washougal Rotary Club; a planting and sensory station hosted by the Camas-Washougal Parent Co-Op Preschool; and a take-home seed-sprouting activity by the Camas Farmer’s Market.

The fair will have live music at the corner of Northeast Fourth Avenue and Northeast Cedar Street, including Bret Malmquist playing acoustic jazz guitar from 10 a.m. to noon, and local singer-songwriter Brenna Larsen playing from noon to 3 p.m.

The event also features a free, volunteer-staffed plant-holding area at Northeast Fifth Avenue and Northeast Cedar Street, where shoppers can leave their purchases until they’re ready to leave; as well as “wagon taxis” courtesy of Scout Troop 565, who will take donations to help transport plants, trees and other purchases from the fair to the plant-holding area.

Public parking will be available throughout downtown Camas, as well at the city of Camas’ free parking lot on Northeast Adams Street, between Northeast Sixth and Northeast Seventh avenues.

For more information, visit cwplantfair.org.

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