-
- Get your garden ready: Throughout the region, garden clubs and organizations will offer up their best and brightest greenery at plant sales.
-
- Not-so-shady characters: Gardeners with nothing but shade — rejoice! Shady Characters nursery from Aiken, S.C., specializes in plants that thrive in low light. Owners Everette and Karen Jones are just a few of the vendors participating in Growin' in the Mountains Spring Garden Show, Friday, April 26, and Saturday, April 27, at the WNC Farmers Market.
Plant sales galore
The soil is warming, trees are blooming and shoots of garlic are poking out of the ground. As gardeners don their gloves and turn the clay, there's only one thing missing: the plants themselves.
Luckily, local botanical gardens, clubs and groups have plenty of plants to share. Plant sale season is upon us and there are lots of opportunities to find familiar favorites and unusual specimens to spruce up the garden.
Heucheras, hostas and herbs, oh my!
With a little (or a lot) of work and the right plants, your backyard could look like Bullington Gardens, a horticultural education center nestled in the rolling hills of Hendersonville. The garden is a haven of woodland greenery, shade and sun. Bullington will share some of its bounty at a spring plant sale on Friday, April 26, and Saturday, April 27.
Native and non-native perennials, including rare varieties of aralia and echium, will be available. Grow vegetables alongside your flowers with heirloom and hybrid tomatoes, squash and peppers.
Proceeds benefit Bullington Gardens, which hosts everything from a therapy garden to a pumpkin patch. http://www.bullingtoncenter.org.
Advice included
Growin' in the Mountains hosts a spring plant sale that offers hundreds of herbs, vegetable starts and flowers on Friday, April 26, and Saturday, April 27. Irises, succulents and dwarf conifers are just a few of the unique cultivars that will be for sale at the WNC Farmers Market on Brevard Road.
The sale is more than an opportunity to pick up some greenery. Growers from near and far will share their knowledge and their plants. As you find out how much sun each plant needs and where to plant the perfect tree, trust the dirt under the experts' fingernails. http://avl.mx/se.
French Broad ferns
The French Broad River Garden Club has been hard at work since 1927. This weekend, the club will open the gates of Clem’s Cabin, 1000 Hendersonville Road, to gardeners of all levels who want to enhance their landscapes with native plants, ferns, flowers and trees. The stars of the show will be varieties of heucherella, heuchera and tiarella, a trio of perennials that will be highlighted this year.
Since honeybees are as essential to the garden as greenery, the sale will also include a presentation by Laurey Masterton, owner of Laurey's Gourmet Comfort Food. With her soon-to-be-published book, The Fresh Honey Cookbook: 84 Recipes from a Beekeeper's Kitchen, she will extol the power of bees. Fresh Honey will be published this fall. Avid gardeners can pre-order an autographed copy at the sale.
As Masterton often says, "don't postpone joy," whether your bliss is honey or hostas. http://www.fbrgcf.org.
Flowers for the future
A wealth of plant sales will herald the arrival of the growing season, including the Botanical Gardens at Asheville annual sale and the Asheville Spring Herb Festival, both on Friday, May 3, and Saturday, May 4. The Black Mountain Garden Show follows soon after, on Saturday, May 18.
Keep your eye on the Garden Calendar for each week's list of plant sales and shows.
Before you comment
The comments section is here to provide a platform for civil dialogue on the issues we face together as a local community. Xpress is committed to offering this platform for all voices, but when the tone of the discussion gets nasty or strays off topic, we believe many people choose not to participate. Xpress editors are determined to moderate comments to ensure a constructive interchange is maintained. All comments judged not to be in keeping with the spirit of civil discourse will be removed and repeat violators will be banned. See here for our terms of service. Thank you for being part of this effort to promote respectful discussion.