WNC's Permaculture Nursery

2025 Events Near Asheville/Black Mountain!

Useful Plants Nursery will have booths open at the following events:

Organic Grower’s School Spring Conference! March 15-16, 2025

Useful Plants Nursery's booth will be open at the OGS Spring Conference on Saturday and Sunday, March 15th & 16th, from 8:30am to 6:00pm.

The Spring Conference supports, inspires, and educates people to farm, garden, and live organically by providing affordable, practical, and hands-on education.

What’s New for the 2025 Spring Conference

Resilience • Recovery • Renewal

This year, OGS has selected the theme of Resilience, Recovery, and Renewal for the 2025 Spring Conference. This theme serves as a strategic framework to guide our efforts in assisting the region's recovery from Hurricane Helene while also fostering the imagination of a new future. It is essential to recognize that restoring our food system to its former state is insufficient; we must come together as a community to engage in constructive discussions and develop the necessary skills to advance collectively toward our goals.

In addition to a core curriculum that will remain consistent with previous years for gardeners, farmers, and individuals interested in sustainable living, all speakers will reflect on how their expertise can provide value during this pivotal moment. Additionally, OGS will introduce three specialized tracks that will address our most urgent needs in the rebuilding process. These topics will encompass:

• Understanding water and soil contamination
• Rebuilding/repairing damaged soils
• Closed loop systems
• Solar and other “off-grid” systems
• Mutual Aid
• Cooking and food preservation as resilience practices
• Lean farming and risk management
• Other topics to come as staff round out the final schedule

OGS is committed to supporting farmers impacted by hurricane Helene. To connect directly with those in need, make donations of supplies or financial support, or access farmer and home grower resources, please visit the OGS recovery page, at: https://www.organicgrowersschool.org/helene-recovery

Asheville Herb Festival, April 25-27, 2025

The Largest herb festival in the United States and Canada – promoting WNC herbs and herbal products since 1990!

The 35th Annual Spring Herb Festival will be held at the WNC Ag Center, Friday-Sunday, April 25-27, 2025. Friday & Saturday 8:30am-5:00pm, Sunday 10:00am-3:00pm

Free Admission – Free Parking – Free Workshops – Leashed dogs welcome!

Growing in the Mountains Plant and Art Festival, May 2-4, 2025

The festival will be open May 2-4, 2025. Friday and Saturday 9am-5pm, and Sunday 10am-2pm at the WNC Farmers Market.

We are excited to announce the dates for the 2025 Growing in the Mountains festival! Mark the date, plot your garden, and dust off your wagon.

*Stay tuned to find out which plants will be available for purchase from the UPN at these events!*

We Need your help!

🌱🌿🌳  UPN GoFundMe  🌳🌿🌱

Hurricane Helene delivered catastrophic winds, flooding, and tree-fall; damaged our water lines; and washed out the roads and bridges to Useful Plants Nursery. While our greenhouses and plants survived, our business losses are substantial.

We extend our deepest gratitude to those who helped grow Useful Plants Nursery into a thriving source of permaculture-based plants and education. And we thank you now for coming to our aid in a time of crisis. We are determined to restore access, plants stocks, and functionality as quickly as possible. We will live long and prosper.

About Useful Plants Nursery

Useful Plants Nursery is a permaculture-based nursery specializing in useful, phytonutritional, food, and medicine plants well-adapted to our Southern Appalachian mountains and surrounding bioregions. Our plants are grown without the use of synthetic pesticides at our nursery located at Earthaven Ecovillage.

We believe that growing your own food and medicine plants is a vitally important strategy and practice for regaining control over our collective and personal lives, our health, and our individual and bioregional economic well being. Our nursery is dedicated to putting those beliefs into practice and truly creating "Liberation through Abundance" as we serve your needs for healthy, useful landscape plants, and work together to reweave the web of life.

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