Itching to rescue a puppy or kitten from your local Humane Society but don’t feel inclined to leave an animal roaming your apartment during the day?

The Garfield Park Conservatory has a solution.

The conservatory has 500 tropical plants, which can’t chew your shoes or scratch your floors, and they need homes before the snowy, gray force that is the Chicago winter descends on the city.

After the June 30 hailstorm damaged 60 percent of the Garfield Park Conservatory, many tropical plants were moved outdoors for the remaining warm days. With the clock ticking faster and faster towards winter, the Chicago Park District felt it needed to act, and the plant sale idea was born.

“Lucky for us, we’re having unseasonably warm conditions, but because we can’t put the plants in the damaged glasses houses, we need help saving them,” said Chicago Park District spokeswoman Zvezdana Kubat. “Help give a plant a home before the cold winter months.”

The sale will be at the Garfield Park Conservatory from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Oct. 22 or until the plants sell out. Most plants will be sold for $10 or less, unless they are large. Master gardeners will also be on site to advise customers on plant care.

Kubat said that in order to house the plants, the park district would need 34,000 square feet of plant storage that it simply does not have right now. Unique and endangered plant species have been sent to the Lincoln Park Conservatory, but there is not additional space available for the remaining plants.

“No plant is replaceable, but the species we’re selling, we can get again,” Kubat said. “The ones we’re not selling are very hard to find. We do have some endangered species that also will not be for sale.”

In September, the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance kicked off an online fundraising campaign, “One Pane at a Time,” to enable people to donate money to replace the shattered glass panes in the roofs of the Fern Room and Show House, as well as the glass in 10 greenhouses.

The conservatory is insured through the Chicago Park District, but the damage is still being assessed. With an estimated cost of $2 million just to clean up the shattered glass, all that is certain is that the plants left without a home need to be relocated.

“Plants that are in conservatories are in there for a reason,” Kubat said. “These plants will die before we get them into storage.”