Annual Spring Garden Sale and Garden Lovers' Weekend

April is National Gardening Month, and Tryon Palace celebrates this with our annual Spring Plant Sale. Join us on Friday and Saturday, April 11 and 12, from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, on the Palace front lawn.  April is a great time to plant – it gives them time to establish their roots before the hot summer months. The plant sale will be offering over 250 different species of plants of which more than 100 are native. Native plants were designed by nature to thrive here. You will find nine different species of Milkweed (Asclepias spp.) These beautiful pollinators are the sole food source for Monarch butterflies.

Other notable plants available at this year’s Spring Plant Sale are the deer resistant salvias and mountain mints, including the Perennial of the Year - Clustered Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum muticum). For hibiscus admirers, there will be several new native hibiscus plants available. Gardener, Hadley Cheris’s list of favorite perennials this year includes False Indigo (Baptisia sp), a lovely spring bloomer with long lasting blue green foliage, and Stokes Aster (Stokesia laevis), a tough evergreen carpeting perennial with beautiful summer blooms great for pollinators. The sale will offer five or more varieties of each of these! If you would like to get a sneak preview of what plants will be there, click on the QR Code below. Come early to the sale for the best selection!

April also brings our Spring Garden Lovers’ Weekend – on the same weekend as the Plant Sale! From Friday, April 11 through Sunday April 13, the Palace opens its gardens to the public with Free Admittance. Come out and celebrate Spring! You will not want to miss seeing Tryon Palace’s formal gardens with crisply pruned hedges that show off the 8,000 tulips and nearly 10,000 flowering annuals that were planted this past fall!  Don’t stay in, get out in the sunshine! Experience the beauty of nature at Tryon Palace.

April Garden Tip from Gardener Mike Spafford

One of the many questions I get is "How much fertilizer should I use?" To this, I ask “Have you had a soil test?" In most cases fertilizer is not necessary, but if it is, I recommend using a slow-release organic fertilizer. That way you are feeding the soil and the plant. Mulching is also important. It helps to hold in moisture and as it breaks down it also builds and enriches the soil.