annuals – Extension Master Gardener Volunteers of Durham County

By Deandra Hill, NC State Master Gardener^SM volunteer of Durham County

Plant Festival

Saturday, April 6, 2024

10:00 am – 1:00 pm

721 Foster Street, Durham, NC

https://www.backyardtreasuresplantsale.org/plant-festival-2024

Tennyson tells us that “In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” It is indeed spring, and my thoughts have turned more than lightly to thoughts of the Plant Festival!

*Plant Festival team co-chair Lissa Lutz, excited to meet community partners and members at the inaugural event. (Image credit: Deandra Hill)*

Actually, co-chairs of the 2024 Plant Festival team, Wanda Crutchfield, Lissa Lutz, and I, along with many others, have been planning since winter to build on the success of last year’s inaugural event. We had an unexpectedly robust turn out despite having to move the event indoors at the last minute, as we discovered the wind did not intend to leave tents and tables in the same place that we set them!

High winds and rain did not discourage the community from joining us at Foster Street to meet with community partners and fellow Master Gardener^SM volunteers to propagate our mission of providing research-based gardening information and advice to the public.

Plant Sale Offerings on Display

The 2024 Plant Festival will feature many of the plants offered the following week at the annual Backyard Treasures Plant Sale on April 13.¹ The attendees are able to see the amazing plants our volunteers have been lovingly growing and tending. They are also able to ask experts about veggies and herbs, native plants, perennials, and houseplants and their needs.

Last year, we partnered with community groups with whom we share similar interests: a number of community gardens, such as Briggs Avenue Community Garden, NC Central’s student garden, and Urban Community AgriNomics (UCAN), founded by former Durham County Extension Director Delphine Sellars.

Plant Experts and Community Partners Answering Questions

(Left to right) Photos highlight our community partners’ involvement at the 2023 festival. A volunteer from Keep Durham Beautiful discussing composting basics; Durham Beekeepers volunteer delights attendees with information on bees; 4-H volunteers help kids make bouquets. (Image credit: Deandra Hill)

We had groups devoted to conservation, such as the NC Native Plant Society and Keep Durham Beautiful. Durham Beekeepers and Extension Master Gardener^SM volunteers showed up to present information on keeping bees and backyard chickens. Not forgetting the children, we had 4-H and Durham Public Schools’ Hub Farm.

Our volunteers represented the Extension Master Gardener^SM program with tables about propagation, container gardening, and our very own demonstration garden, as well as being on hand to answer questions about gardening.

This year, we are lucky to feature many of the same community partners and plant pros at the Festival. In addition, we have experts providing information on veggie container gardening and using “green” pots to help lessen plastic waste.

Plant and Gardening Book Give-a-ways

Who doesn’t love free stuff? Well, at our 2023 inaugural event, the Plant Festival gave away 250 plants that represented the offerings from the Plant Sale, as well as free garden books welcome to anyone who attended! We will be returning again this year with a plant give-a-way and free books while supplies last.²

This year we will also be offering free trees! We will be distributing 2-year-old oaks trees, locally grown at Panther Creek Forest Farm, in partnership with Keep Durham Beautiful. Durham community members will be able to take home and plant one of these keystone plants that play such a pivotal role in our ecosystem.

(Left to right, top to bottom) Just a few of the many plants that will be part of the Plant Festival give-a-way including tomatoes–several varieties (Solanum lycopersicum L.); paperbush (Edgeworthia chrysanthia); golden pothos (Epipremnum aureum); polka dot begonia (Begonia maculata); basil (Ocimum basilicum), and butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa). (Image credit: Master Gardener^SM volunteers of Durham County)

Community Representation at the Event

In conjunction with efforts of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee, the Plant Festival team has worked diligently to increase the representation of our community partners to include groups that match the faces and demographics that make up our community.

To that end, we reached out to community organizations in the Native American, Black, and Latino communities. We are excited to also be including El Futuro, the Black Farmers’ Market, and NC A&T along with our returning community partners. We may even have a couple more new faces by the time this blog is posted. This work can seem slow, but we have high hopes to keep reaching out and extending our figurative hands to more groups.

So here’s to a sunny and breezy (but not windy!) day this April 6. We hope to see your smiling face in the crowd.

To see a full list of plants you will see at the Plant Festival along with a full list of exhibitors and educators who will be there, check out this link:

https://www.backyardtreasuresplantsale.org/plant-festival-2024

Notes

1–For additional information on the upcoming Backyard Treasures Plant Sale on April 13, including photos and lists of plants available for purchase, visit the online site. https://www.backyardtreasuresplantsale.org.

2–The first 250 attendees to the Plant Festival will receive a ticket for a free plant with a time, starting at 11:00 am. Check out all the plant offerings before 11:00 am, and when your time slot comes up, trade your ticket for one of the plants of your choice. Time slots are every 15 minutes between 11:00 and 12:30, and you must be present to claim your plant. One ticket per person, please.

Article Short Link https://wp.me/p2nIr1-4lf

By Jane Malec

I don’t follow all the rules when I garden. My yard often has a look of wild abandonment which would make many gardeners scratch their heads. If I love a plant it will usually find its way into my garden. This is one of the reasons there are pots in the most “interesting” places. Sometimes it isn’t good for a marriage to keep digging up grass for more flower beds so I have to be inventive!

One of my all time favorites plants is Persian Shield, Strobilanthes dyerianus, a tender perennial that loves the sun and but will tolerate shade. In fact, mid afternoon shade can help it keep the rich purple color in its iridescent silvery leaves. I love to put Persian Shield in pots. It pairs well with plants with foliage and flowers in the bronze, purple, gray and pink ranges. It will grow quite tall, up to 3′ if it isn’t pinched back and the stunning leaves are 6 to 8″ long. A Persian Shield will be a show stopper in mid summer when other plants fade.

The house we are renting has a very shady yard. Many of my favorite plants for pots need more sun that I can provide them. Believe me, part sun is a stretch for us. So, I bought lots of ferns, coleus and impatiens this spring but decided to bend those rules for a couple of my favorites including Persian Shield.

I had some failures of course, the pineapple sage, Salvia elegans, was spindly and didn’t flower, the white geranium, Pelargonium x hortorum, produced only a few blooms and the celosia, Celosia argentea, was – well, just sad. However, the Persian Shield made up for all the failures.

It grew in the most amazing form and the color stayed beautifully purple. I paired it with dark pink new guinea impatiens, Impatiens hawkeri, which gave it a wonderful pop of color. Come mid summer, I noticed that the Persian was really reaching for sunlight but there was nowhere to move it with more than the 2 or so hours it was receiving. So there it stayed. Happily, it continued stretching and growing creating an almost artful shape. This tender plant has pushed through the several cold nights and is now the show stopper it is meant to be!

The moral of the story…if you love a plant go ahead and experiment because sometimes rules are meant to be broken or at least bent a little!