Browsing a row of hostas Saturday at Wiscasset Garden Club’s annual plant sale, Cynthia Spurgin was already carrying around a potted Jacob’s ladder plant. It will look beautiful growing next to her house, which is green, she said.

Like some of the other shoppers inside the municipal building, the Wiscasset woman attends every year. It’s partly for the plants, but also the knowledge and advice of the club’s members who have put their hard work into nurturing them, she said.

Spurgin and others interviewed also cited the sale’s function as a community experience — a chance to talk to someone new or catch up with someone they haven’t seen since last year’s sale, and help a cause. The sale is the club’s biggest fundraiser and benefits scholarships and community projects, members said.

“It’s the culmination of a lot of work,” Newcastle’s Jeanne Thompson said. Members work toward it for at least half a year, past president Emily Adler said. “So it’s a big deal.”

A new feature this year, a kids’ table with gift ideas for Mother’s Day, proved popular and will be back next year, Adler said. Ginger Milligan led the work on it, Adler added.

Julia Simpson was layered up for the gray first Saturday morning of May as she tended a bake sale outside with fellow Dresden resident Sandi Panati.

Simpson contributed snickerdoodles and ginger snaps to the club’s table full of treats; Panati, a pecan pie with chocolate chips. It’s a Kentucky Derby pie, she said. She and husband Don Panati were having five other couples over later for a Derby party complete with mint juleps and off-track Derby bets.

The club’s recording secretary Margaret Holden of Edgecomb was helping inside as shoppers walked around the plants on the floor and crouched to consider their picks. Some of her favorite plants are the early-blooming brunnera and pulmonaria, she said. As for her favorite part of the sale, she said: “The people. It’s a very happy occasion.”