Opening at 4 p.m. on Monday, April 24, and going through Wednesday, April 26, the Horticulture Program will be holding a flower sale in the parking lot of the Beatrice Southeast Community College campus.

Kevin Christiansen, an Ag instructor at the Beatrice campus, teaches a Greenhouse class to students in the Horticulture program.

He said that “[p]art of their curriculum is to learn how to properly grow and maintain these flowers throughout the semester.”

They hold this flower sale to 1) get rid of these flowers the students had to grow (without just throwing them away) and 2) try to earn some of the money that they spent on planting back.

Christiansen said, “All the money earned from this flower fund-raiser will go back to the AG program to help replenish the supplies the students used to plant the flowers.”

On the first day of the sale, there is expected to be anywhere from 50-100 people waiting to buy flowers as they will have the best pickings.

Everyone is welcome to come and shop through the different types of flowers on sale.      There will mostly be annual flowers (petunias, geraniums and more) on sale, with a few perennials as well.

The flowers will be $3-$5 each, depending on the size of the pot. The smaller ones are about 3 inches across, and the other ones are only a little bit bigger, also called “number ones.”

There will be no preordering. One will just sort through right then what there is, find what they like and get how many they like as there is no limit.

Christiansen states that the students enjoy holding this sale and not just because they have to do it. They spend the whole semester planting these and take pride in being able to show off their work to people who are excited to buy.

The students also learn good customer skills from this flower sale that they will be able to use later in life, even if they don’t go into a career with direct customer conversation.

They also learn how to present themselves and their work to people in a pleasant manner, as well as how to talk to and treat customers nicely.

As Christiansen explained “You can grow the best plant in the world, but if you can’t sell it, it’s no good.”