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In a nod to the Society’s 40th anniversary and the great expositions of San Francisco’s past, our June Show and Sale has been rebranded as the SF SUCCULENT EXPO. Detailed information and weekend presentation schedule below
The event is held at the San Francisco County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park – more info
June 14-16 2024
- Free and Open to the public:
Saturday 10 am – 5 pm
Sunday 9 am – 5 pm - Society members early access:
Friday 3 pm – 7pm
Saturday 9 am – 10am - Members can also skip the entry line all weekend! Join now for $15
- NOTE that the show area is still being set up Friday for the member-only preview sale. We encourage members to come to shop Friday and then come back for presentations and the show over the weekend.
Featuring
- 40+ Plant vendors selling unusual species of succulents & cacti you can’t buy at stores.
- Expanded hand-made pottery selection with 5+ new and returning vendors
- Plant Hotel (store plants while you shop)
- Exceptional specimens on display in the “Nicely Grown” plant show
- Expert growing advice, live planting demonstrations.
- Habitat & conservation info.
- Proceeds support the SF Succulent Society’s monthly programs and further our mission of education, conservation, and propagation
- Our friends from the SF Bromeliad Society will also be participating.
Make your experience more enjoyable
- BYOB – SAVE TREES: Please bring your own box to shop and take plants home
- Please plan to pay by card or tap for quicker checkout.
- Use the plant hotel to store your plants while you enjoy the show
- Pro-Tip: Saturday morning is always the most crowded and longest lines
- Sunday and afternoons are always less crowded, so come then if you can.
- More space and more registers + additional day (Friday, members only) mean less crowding.
Special Presentations
We are proud to present several programs in the Auditorium where the show is held. These are free and open to the public on a first come first seated basis. The featured talks on Sunday will be streamed live on Zoom.
Saturday June 15 at 11:30 am
“Judges Table Talk“
Show Chair and Judges
Announcing the show winners and highlighting some of the best plants.
Saturday June 15 at 1:00 pm
“Propagation and Potting Demonstration”
Walker Young
Walker Young, the Assistant Curator at the Ruth Bancroft Garden, will be giving a demonstration on propagation and potting at the SFSCS Show & Sale.
He will discuss soil mixes, pot choices, the importance of light levels, potting techniques, propagation, and also some of the common pests encountered in growing succulent plants. He will field questions from the audience, so think of things you might want to ask!
Sunday June 16 at 11:00 am
A Gallimaufry of Non-Sphaeroid Mesembs
Steven Hammer – grower, oracle, author
Pebble-shaped mesemb species garner 90% of the attention of hortists and 110% of the attention of informal pluckers. This oddly selective adoration tends to unbalance our feelings about the family; it even impacts its taxonomy, giving us a two-caste system. None of the other 118 – let’s pretend – genera have elaborate tiers of subspecies, varieties, and fetish-forms. Perhaps they should, perhaps they shouldn’t, but today’s pre-taco talk will show us what some of the fuss isn’t about. Toward the end we will graduate toward the familiar joys of rotundity.
Steven Hammer has been growing and contemplating short, medium, or tall mesembs since 1961 and has written a finite number of books on this endless subject. His cohort, Oakes Austin, has been growing and photographing plants since there were spongiform smart phones.
Join the Zoom Meeting: Meeting Link
Our Sunday morning presentation for the weekend will function as the SFSCS monthly meeting for June, and as our summer installment of our MesembsVirtually lecture series, in conjunction with the Manchester Branch of the British Cactus and Succulent Society and the Mesemb Study Group.
Zoom stream will start at 11am Pacific Daylight Time in California, (7pm in the UK) with a quick tour of the show
Sunday June 16 at 1:30 pm
Dudleya: Intriguing Species, Beautiful Examples, and a New Book
Kelly Griffin – habitat explorer, hybridizer, grower
My talk will be on my favorite area of plant study, The genus Dudleya! It will emphasize intriguing and interesting species along with the most beautiful examples of this genus. This is a very California succulent plant that inhabits California, Baja California and pushes its range limits into Arizona, Nevada and Oregon with a couple of species that cross state lines.
The program is not book based, far from it in fact, but I will have both the soft and hard cover versions of the new publication titled Dudleyas available for sale. This book is the culmination of many decades of work, study and photography from myself, Jeremy Spath and Jeff Moore. It is well illustrated and boasts over a thousand photos, but do take time to read it too, as it contains much useful information. I look forward to sharing and meeting old friends and new!
Join the Zoom Meeting if you can’t make it in person
Register or join the meeting in progress
Zoom room will open at 1:00 pm Pacific Daylight Time in California. Talk will start promptly at 1:30
Location
The San Francisco County Fair Building
- On the southern edge of Golden Gate Park at 9th Ave. and Lincoln Way – Directions
- 1199 9th Ave, San Francisco, CA 94122
Muni:
Easy access via 7, 44 bus and & the N-Judah which will take you to BART in downtown SF.
Parking:
There is no public parking lot at the County Fair Building. If you plan to drive, carefully read and obey all posted signs on city and park streets, as they are STRICTLY enforced. You will have a better chance to find parking the earlier you come, otherwise plan on allotting additional time to park. Look for parking along the streets in the park (Martin Luther King Jr Drive and Nancy Pelosi Drive) or along Lincoln Way. There are hourly parking garages further away (Golden Gate Park Parking Garage North Entrance).
Get reminders and invite your friends
- Sign up for our free email announcement list.
- Help us spread the word on our Facebook event. Mark yourself as “going” and click “share” to send invites.
Get involved
Volunteering is a great way to meet people and have fun helping the Society.
Sign up for shifts and get no-line admission on the day you volunteer (including Friday early access).
On Saturday and Sunday we also offer $10 per 2-hour shift sale credit (“showbucks”) as a thank-you.
Show your plants or enter a display in the juried plant show. Check out our Show Participants Guide and contact the show chair if you are interested..
- There will be prizes for individual plants & displays.
- There will be theme displays and prizes for the best crested/monstrose, grafted, and hybrid plants, and for “Fabulous Tales” (plants submitted with stories.)
- Show plant load in for non-vendors is Friday 9am till 7:30pm and Saturday first thing in the morning 7:30–8am.
- Plants must remain on display till 5pm Sunday, and be loaded out by 6:30.
Vendors
Northern California’s top rare Cactus and Succulent sellers:
Desert Wonders
Gardeners Home
Planta Seca
PB & J Cacti & Succulents
Radiant Cactus and Succulents (Sacramento)
L&J Plants and Things
Returning Favorites and New Surprises:
Gardenia Gardens and Design
Cloud Hidden Plants
Succielife
Edna’s Garden
Fynbos Flora
Gardeneur
CasaPlants
The Succulent Addict
Succulents and Beyond – NEW
An epic selection of succulent pottery
Peety Pots (LA)
Rowe Clayworks (Morro Bay)
Cherney Design
Rene Rosso
SFSCS Member Potters
Specialized local botanical growers / hybridizers
Artisan Plants
Agavoides
Dunne & Parisi
Epiphyllum World
Jim Smith
Vendors from the Monterey Bay Area and the Central Coast
California Succulents (Watsonville)
JC Succulents (Watsonville)
Desert Rose of Santa Cruz
Jorge Quiñónez (Monterey)
Grow (Morro Bay)
And plant vendors all the way from Southern California
Kyles Plants (LA) – NEW
Green Touch Nursery (LA)
Sphaeroid Institute (San Diego) – NEW
Thorn Oasis (LA) – NEW
Partner society and co-organizers:
Bromeliad Society of SF (air plants and bromeliads plants from 12+ members)
And many more growers:
Casper’s Landscape
Karen Casino
Sus’s Succulents
Marilyn Mangle
Hongting Wang
J. D. Wikert
Dana Gardner and Michael Chin
Vendor list is closed for this year. If you are interested in future years, the best way is to join the Society, come to meetings, and offer to be a featured grower at a monthly meeting.
Existing vendor links: Barcode order form (deadline June 1), 2023 Vendor Handbook (coming soon)