Special Plants for Special Athletes

Every year for the past 6 years, we have had the pleasure of bringing hundreds of plants to the Summer Special Olympics in New Haven, CT and interacting with the athletes to repot them into slightly bigger pots for them to take home. We became part of a Pot-a-Plant program in 2013, begun out in California, which gave great suggestions for how to set up potting stations conducive for people with extra challenges. When we got the call from a colleague out west, asking if we would be the Connecticut interior landscaper to fundraise or get donations of plants and supplies and set up and staff the tent with volunteers for the 3 day Summer Special Olympics event for thousands of athletes, we jumped at the chance! We loved the idea of the athletes, their families and their coaches having an activity that was interactive, involved something natural and resulted in something that needed their care or could be a living gift to someone they cared about.

We offered 4 or 5 different plant varieties so that they had the fun of choosing their favorite, helped them pot it up and bagged it with its name and instructions of how to care for it. To chat with them about the sports events they would be competing in or what the medals hanging from their neck were for, was just as important as helping them pot a plant. To see the look of their faces, proud of their accomplishment and excitement of having a plant of their own or giving it to their coach, parent or other loved one, was a treat we experienced over and over.

We didn’t even figure on the joy we felt, year after year, when athletes came back eager to pot up another plant, with stories of how they still have the plant from the year before or how delighted their Mom was to get a gift plant that they had planted themselves!

We don’t get to do it this year given the situation with the pandemic but hope to be back in Olympic Town next year!