Welcome Affordable Housing Fund Day of Building AHF Raffle AHF Book Drive AHRC Plant Sale
Special Events   Upcoming Events   Calendar of Events   Volunteer   Contact Us  FA Home Page

AHRC Plant Sale

Each semester we host the AHRC Plant Sales, bringing colleagues together for a good cause and raising thousands of dollars for Respite House. AHRC Respite provides short-term care for children and adults with developmental challenges at some of AHRC's community residences and at its freestanding respite home on the grounds of Flowerfield Gardens in Holtsville.

Please support this noteworthy activity while sprucing up your home and gardens with hanging baskets, flats of annuals & perennials, fresh herbs, small trees and bushes, gifts, and much more. Prices range from $2.50 to $40.00.

If you'd like to participate, click the Volunteer image above and contact the appropriate organizer. Two volunteers are needed on each day for the following time slots: 9:30am to 11am, 11am to 12:30pm, 12pm to 1pm, and 1pm to 2:30pm.

In 2006-2007, our AHRC Spring Plant Sales raised over $4,000 for this worthy organization, and our Fall 2007 Plant Sales raised $1,470 (Grant $544; East $420; Ammerman $506)

Below is Community Outreach Co-Chair Dan Linker's November 2006 article about last year's event.

Community Outreach Keeps Growing by Dan Linker, Co-Chair As I begin to write this article, I can’t help but glance at the windowsill where sits a vibrant, bright orange and red mum. In the week since I placed it there, not one person has entered the office without commenting on how nice it looks, how it adds a certain something to the room. And yet there’s more to it, since it was not simply purchased at a flower shop, but rather here on campus at last week’s fundraising plant sale.

On Wednesday, the 4th of October, I exchanged my usual khakis and button down for jeans and a casual shirt and headed over to Veterans Square to help the workers of AHRC set up this fall’s plant sale at the Ammerman Campus. The gorgeous day was complemented by the tidy new landscaping of the square and the autumnal rainbow of mums and assorted flowers, decorating sidewalks, benches, tables, and grass. Even our FA Community Outreach banner never looked nicer, flanked by grinning scarecrows in overalls and adorned with a floral border. By 10:00 AM we were set up and sales began immediately.

Each semester, the Grant and Ammerman campuses hold plant sales sponsored by the FA/Community Outreach in conjunction with the men and women from AHRC, the Association for the Help of Retarded Children, Suffolk. The beautiful plants are supplied by Flowerfields, and in keeping with the housing orientated mission of our Community Outreach program, the money earned is given to the Respite House, which is on the Flowerfields grounds and is geared towards the mentally retarded that are enrolled in AHRC’s programs.

Mohini Ratna on the Grant Campus again did a fantastic job helping coordinate their sale. She writes, “We made a profit of $1000. We had volunteers from Faculty, AME, Students, and Guild. The Desi Club students and their president, Ali Mohsin carried plants for our customers. It was the team spirit that made it remarkable. The support that we received from FA, FA-Community Outreach Committee, the Grant Campus Administration, and the Maintenance Department needs to be acknowledged.” Among other volunteers were Giselle Torres, Anabel Darini, Sylvia Grossbach, and Theresa Morales. And as in the past at the Ammerman Campus, Jenn Ortiz helped organize the sale which generated $769. She was assisted by volunteers Marya Shepherd, Sarah Gutowski, Dan Linker, Becky Turner, Deborah Provenzano, Julie Hanauer, Susan Orlando, and Carole Gambrell. Thanks so much to all of you.

Four years ago this month, Liz Cone wrote an article for The Word entitled “Why Don’t We Just Write a Check?: The One about Unions and Community Service.” In it she spoke about her own participation in fundraising events such as the Avon Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk and other charitable activities. And while, to be sure, every charity loves to receive money, she wrote, “but community service is something different. It’s not just about writing a check and sending it off to be forgotten until you fill out your 1040 in April.” In reference to a five mile walk for Affordable Housing in which she and other FA members had recently participated, she said, “it was fun and worthwhile and one small thing that we could, and did, do to make life look more like what we want it to look like.” She’s right. We can simply write a check to the Pardoner disguised as charity to sell us an indulgence, but there’s more to it. It is similar to the feeling you get when you have attended a play, a reading, an exhibition, the feeling that you’ve done more than just see a display; you’ve engaged. And when you have physically helped and participated, made human contact, received the tangible benefits and perhaps more importantly, that certain something that a plant on the windowsill can help conjure, that’s when you have truly connected.

So now as I return my gaze to that mum by the window, I see that it’s already beginning to droop a bit. And I realize that it’s not a one time deal; I can’t just put it there and be done. You have water it, and keep on watering it.