Tag Archives: Gardening

Events, Meetings, Previous Events, Previous Meetings

If You Plant It, They Will Come!—Tuesday, March 11, at 11:30 a.m.

We hope you will join
the Garden Club of Weaverville
for our March 2025 Meeting

If You Plant It, They Will Come!

Tuesday, March 11, at 11:30 a.m.

In the Weaverville Community Center
[60 Lakeshore Drive, Albert Weaver Room]

Are you interested in learning how to control non-native invasive plants in your yard, on your street, or on your homeowners’ association property?

If so, please join us at our upcoming meeting where Bob Gale, local invasives expert and ecologist, will discuss issues related to non-native invasive plants, methods of control, and ideas for moving your yard toward a more natural ecosystem. He will also describe landscape changes that you can expect to occur—regarding both native and non-native invasive plants—as a result of Tropical Storm Helene, and he’ll share ideas for restoration planting and erosion control.

In 2023, Bob retired as the ecologist and public lands director for the non-profit organization MountainTrue, where he worked for 25 years providing scientific input on issues related to environmental policy and protection and restoration of Southern Appalachian mountain forest communities. While with MountainTrue, he founded the organization’s non-native invasive species program, promoting invasive plant control methodologies and native plant replacement.

Following his time at MountainTrue, Bob formed RestoraFlora–Gale Botanical Consulting, a business focused on advising individual homeowners and HOAs on non-native invasive plant removal and wildlife friendly native plantings.

Bob received his bachelor’s degree in geology and biology at the University of South Carolina. His special interest is botany, and he has spent his life working in fields related to this subject. For over two decades, Bob served in many positions as an environmental activist with the Sierra Club in South Carolina, which helped prepare him for his career with MountainTrue. He also spent many years as a nature writer and photographer—contributing to regional and national magazines—and as a wetlands scientist for Ballantine Environmental Resources in the South Carolina Lowcountry. Bob has an additional interest and expertise in paleontology and, with his wife and son, co-authored the first field guide to Atlantic and Gulf coastal fossils.

All are welcome to attend. The garden club will not provide refreshments this month, but feel free to bring your own lunch, snack, or beverages to enjoy immediately following the program, if you’d like. The business meeting will begin soon thereafter.

Club of Weaverville is a co-ed, non-profit organization open to everyone. For more information on what we do, becoming a member, or supporting the club, visit our website.

Events, Meetings, Previous Events, Previous Meetings

In the Garden after Helene—Tuesday, February 11, at 11:30 a.m.

We hope you will join
the Garden Club of Weaverville
for our February 2025 Meeting

In the Garden after Helene

Tuesday, February 11, at 11:30 a.m.

In the Weaverville Community Center
[60 Lakeshore Drive, Albert Weaver Room]

Many gardens and landscapes were impacted by the heavy rains and strong winds created by Hurricane Helene in late September 2024. Today’s garden challenges include the fact that fallen trees have led to more sun in what were once shade gardens. Also, slopes and stream banks have eroded. But is this change a problem? Or is it an opportunity?

Join Alison Arnold, Buncombe County Agriculture Extension Agent, for an interactive question and answer session to talk about what happened in your garden as a result of Helene and to develop ideas for going forward. Attendees are invited to bring questions about and examples of the landscape challenges you are facing. 

And in response to several member inquiries, Alison will also give a brief overview of the Buncombe Master Gardener Volunteer program. 

At the Buncombe County Cooperative Extension Office, Alison is responsible for all consumer horticulture topics in Buncombe County, including the Buncombe Master Gardener Volunteer program.

*The following article on the Buncombe Master Gardener website is an excellent post-Helene resource: Flooding and Wind Damage: What’s Next for Your Landscape?

All are welcome to attend. The garden club will not provide refreshments this month, but feel free to bring your own lunch, snack, or beverages to enjoy immediately following the program, if you’d like. The business meeting will begin soon thereafter.

Club of Weaverville is a co-ed, non-profit organization open to everyone. For more information on what we do, becoming a member, or supporting the club, visit our website.

Events, Meetings, Previous Events, Previous Meetings

All-Season Perennial Color—Tuesday, February 13, at 11:30 a.m.

We hope you will join
The Garden Club of Weaverville
for Our February 2024 Meeting

Program: How to be a Bird-Friendly Gardener 

Tuesday, February 13, at 11:30 a.m.

In the Weaverville Community Center Multipurpose Room 

60 Lakeshore Drive

Native Garden

Do you want a flower garden that delivers continuous blooms and color from spring through summer and into the fall? Gardens that offer color throughout the growing season simply require a little planning. But like most anything worthwhile, they offer tenfold back to you in their beauty and value to pollinators. Pat Sommers of Weaverville’s Natural Selections Nursery will walk us through what’s required to create, in our area, a native perennial garden with yearlong interest.

Pat studied horticulture/landscape design, including as an intern in plant breeding and plant evaluation, at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and she worked as an outdoor volunteer at the Asheville Botanical Gardens for nine years. For many years, her mother taught her about the native plants of New England while taking walks in the woods. Pat started growing natives from seed 16 years ago when she moved to our area. And since moving to Weaverville in 2015, she has been growing native plants. She has taught a number of classes on how to grow natives and their important place in various ecosystems, and she can be frequently found hunched over a plant on the side of a trail anyplace in the area.

PatSommers

The Garden Club of Weaverville is a co-ed, non-profit organization open to everyone. For more information on what we do, becoming a member, or supporting the club, visit our website.

Previous Events, Previous Meetings

Meadow Gardening a la Carte with Randy Burroughs – Tuesday, April 9th at 9:30 AM

We hope you will join
The Garden Club of Weaverville
for Our April Meeting
Program: Meadow Gardening a la Carte
a slide show and discussion with Randy Burroughs

 

Tuesday, April 9th at 9:30 am

In the Weaverville Town Hall Community Room

The art of combining your favorite wildflowers and grasses into a living tapestry is now possible as never before. We’ll look at what meadowing is historically, artistically and ecologically; and discuss the nuances of nature-based gardening. You’ll learn to design, prep the site, buy plants and install your meadow. Birds & butterflies will thank you.

Randy Burroughs is a horticulturist, NC landscape architect and meadow gardener practicing from deep in the mountains above Asheville.  His work experience includes the UGA Botanical Gardens, City Horticulturist at Greenville SC, Arbor Engineering Inc., and Native Garden Manager at the Botanical Gardens at UNCA.  Since 2001 Randy has been in private practice doing site work & native landscape design.  He is an earnest student of natural systems and their uses in civilized landscapes.

* Please print this Meadow Guidelines document & bring it to the meeting if you would like to have a hardcopy *

The Garden Club of Weaverville is a co-ed, non-profit organization open to everyone. For more information on what we do, becoming a member or supporting the club visit our website.