A new use has taken hold on Facebook Marketplace in the Colorado Springs area, where the platform better known for secondhand furniture and used bicycles has become a venue for backyard plant sales. Neighborhood flower stands in the Pikes Peak region have moved online, with homegrown plants quietly carving out space on a platform that functions as the internet's modern-day garage sale. Prices are a key part of the appeal: locally grown vegetables, flowers, and herbs are changing hands for considerably less than what the same items cost at large chain garden centers.
One Colorado Springs gardener has spent fifty years tending gardens and the past decade living in the city, but only started using Facebook Marketplace as his sales outlet two years ago. The shift began when a vegetable planting produced far more seedlings than he expected; he listed the surplus online to see what would happen and ended up selling nearly all of them. He and his wife now move an array of produce through the platform — including tomatoes, peppers, onions, squash, zucchini, and lettuce — and the side business has taken on deeper meaning for the family. Facing serious personal health challenges, the couple described raising their own food as "kind of a necessity" in order to eat naturally without absorbing high grocery store costs.
The price gap between these backyard sellers and major retailers is substantial. The couple offers starter plants at $3 apiece, or a bundle of four for $10. At Lowe's, a single starter runs $6, and larger multi-plant packs cost between $8 and $15. Buyers have responded enthusiastically to the difference, with customers noting they can walk away with four plants for roughly what one would cost at a chain store, the gardener said.
A second seller operating under the name Johnny Grey's Greens has approached the market from a different background. A Netherlands native and former horticulturist, he relocated to Colorado Springs from New Mexico about a year ago. Within his roughly 400-square-foot garden plot, he established 80 flowering plants over three months and has already moved about half of them through Facebook Marketplace. Alongside flowers, he offers vegetable starters — including cabbage, peppers, and chiles — in four-packs priced at $2.75, hoping the low cost makes gardening more accessible and steers shoppers toward local sources. He characterized his motivation as community-oriented rather than profit-driven, saying his plants are grown "pretty much organically with very little fertilizer" and that his goal is not to "earn a lot of money" but to help neighbors get into gardening.
Whether the informal digital plant market sustains its momentum through the remainder of the summer growing season will depend on how many buyers and backyard growers continue to find each other through the platform.