Sunshine for 10th anniversary of Trade Secrets

SHARON — Women’s Support Services was rewarded with perfect weather for the 10th anniversary Trade Secrets garden sale and tours.

The sale was held Saturday, May 15, and the garden tour was the following day, with three new gardens, all in Kent. As always, Trade Secrets’ creator and honorary chairwoman, Bunny Williams, also invited visitors onto her extensive grounds in Falls Village.

Veterans of Trade Secrets know that the weather on the event weekend generally runs the gamut from bad to awful. This year, the clouds dispersed, the ground was dry (thanks to a no-show by the rains that had threatened to come Friday afternoon and evening) and the sun actually was out for most of the weekend.

The many organizers and volunteers who bring Trade Secrets to life each year were rewarded with a steady stream of visitors to the rare plant and garden accessories sale, held Saturday at Elaine LaRoche’s Lion Rock Farm in Sharon; and Sunday to the Kent gardens of Bud and Monika Nixon, Robert Couturier and Jeffrey Morgan, and Joan Lardner.

Vendors at the Saturday sale said visitors were in a buying mood. It was a reflection not only of the excellent wares for sale (there was so much merchandise that tables, plants, urns and more peeked out of every nook, cranny and corner at Lion Rock) but also, they said, of an apparently more robust economy.

Visitors traveled in for the weekend of events from all over New York state and New England. Two women at the garden tour Sunday said they were on their way to the airport to catch a flight home to Philadelphia, Pa.

Local celebrities also turned out in force. Spotted among the Saturday shoppers were Martha Stewart, fashion designer Oscar de la Renta, actress Blair Brown, garden book author Carolyne Roehm, socialite Anne Bass and former Vogue magazine editor Polly Mellen.

Sales tallies weren’t available at press time, but on Saturday afternoon organizer Deb Munson said that attendance was probably the best it’s ever been.

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