Members Only Garden Tour: If you are interested in becoming a member please read our About page for more information. We always welcome new members!
Ralph Coffey, of the 1889 Whitegate Inn, showed us his orchid greenhouse and talk about his experiences growing these tropical beauties. He also gave us a tour of the inn gardens emphasizing plant form and placement.
If you are not seeing the photographs by Ronnie Watkins, click on the title. .
Our topic for this meeting was “How to Combine Natives into Your Perennial Garden,” a talk by Pat Sommers, who runs her own native nursery in Asheville, Natural Selections Nursery: Plants of the Southern Highlands. She addressed issues such as drought-tolerance and placing the right plant in the right place. Pat is quite passionate about this subject and extremely knowledgeable.
Click to view Pat’s presentation: (Smart phone users may have to scroll to bottom of this page and click on Full Site View first)
(Click on the x in upper left corner to leave presentation OR press Escape key on your keyboard).
Gardening with Native Perennials
Click here for more information on Gardening with Native Plants.
RAISED-BED GARDENING
Grow your own the easy way! Raised-bed gardening offers many benefits including easy maintenance, an expanded growing season, higher yields, and good drainage. Different approaches to raised-bed gardening and the various benefits, plus soil mix recipes andother considerations were presented and discussed by Wilma Penland & Ruth Gonzalez of Reems Creek Nursery. Both enthusiastic and knowledgeable vegetable gardeners, Wilma is the founder of Reems Creek Nursery and has been growing vegetables since her childhood, and Ruth has a background in market gardening and is current President of the Board of Directors of the Organic Growers School based in Asheville.
We learned that other reasons to do raised beds are for improved soil quality, use of areas not ideal for traditional gardening, for convenience, flexibility. The only down side is the increased drying out of soil during hot months; so attention must be paid to watering.
Your imagination is the main ingredient for a making raised bed. You should always keep in mind your easy access to the center and all sides of the bed and not make beds too wide or long. You may want to consider somehow discouraging voles coming in from the bottom.Stay away from toxic materials for your bed including creosote, wood preservatives, glues, paint, etc. Otherwise you can make beds from concrete blocks, untreated wood, hay bales, fabric, stones, forest products, etc. You can purchase plastic beds elevated on legs with rollers and have an attached vertical trellis from Reems Creek Nursery.
What are your raised bed stories and pictures to share? Use Contact Us to send in.
Our January 9th meeting was at the regular time of 9:30 am at the Town of Weaverville Community Room.
Our speaker was Clara A. Curtis, Director for Design, Education and Exhibit Assets at the North Carolina Arboretum. She discussed the history of the NC Arboretum and its mission programs. NC Arboretum is located:
“…amid a 434-acre public garden located within the Bent Creek Experimental Forest. Surrounded by lush folds of the botanically diverse Southern Appalachian Mountains, The North Carolina Arboretum is adjacent to the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway, at Milepost 393, and is nestled in one of the most beautiful natural settings in America.
The North Carolina Arboretum is located on land within the Pisgah National Forest, and is operated under a special use permit issued by the National Forests in North Carolina.
Established in 1986 by the General Assembly as an affiliate of the University of North Carolina, the Arboretum was founded nearly a century after Frederick Law Olmsted, the ‘Father of American Landscape Architecture,’ first envisioned such an institution near Asheville as part of his legacy to the Biltmore Estate.”
From website: www.ncarboretum.org/about-us/
More than just a stunning display of nature, this jewel of our state has a mission with five components:
We learned that because of the massive cuts in state funding of our publicly supported university system, our arboretum has the extra job of increased fund-raising. This puts more responsibility on private sources and community support for fulfilling the mission. We are encouraged to take classes, participate in events, visit exhibits, and become active members of the NC Arboretum.
We learned that NC Arboretum is being gifted this year with the only statue in this country of Frederick Law Olmstead. We are encouraged to look for this and other new developments.
Clara A. Curtis, Director for Design, Education and Exhibit Assets at the North Carolina Arboretum and garden club members
The Garden Club of Weaverville, NC 