The Joy of Blooming and Planting Season in WNC

This spring, we've spent a lot of time here at the Inn doing significant landscaping and thinking quite a lot about plants, flowers and trees.  Just this past weekend, we had the pleasure of attending the Whole Blooming Thing Festival in the Frog Level District of Downtown Waynesville.  This wonderful street fair is walkable from the Inn and features so many great flower and plant vendors, plus amazing local craftspeople and artisans.  There was live music, great food, great drinks, beautiful weather and overall, a joyous celebration of the planting and blooming season.  Head on over to our Instagram page to check out our video strolling through the festival.  While the fall is unquestionably the most popular season in Waynesville, the spring is just as beautiful as all the flowers bloom and the green comes out in force.  Read on to learn about some of our favorite places to experience the wonders of spring here in Western North Carolina and what we are doing at the Inn to enhance the landscaping with native flowers and bushes.

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While the Whole Blooming Thing Festival is a one-day celebration of spring, we've been hard at work at the Inn laying the foundation for future years of beautiful springs on our grounds.  The most exciting project was cleaning up the property line along the driveway and planting a row of hydrangeas from the curve in the driveway all the way up to the Carriage House.  Come late spring and summer each year, we should have beautiful blue, pink, white and purple hydrangeas decorating the drive into and out of the Inn.  We hope it will add to the welcoming feeling on the property.

As innkeepers, a part of our job is to look out over our property and continue to think about how to make it better and improve the experience for our guests.  We see the outdoor spaces at the Inn as a relatively blank canvas with a great foundation.  The current landscape features beautiful rose bushes, rhododendrons, irises, daffodils, crepe myrtle, dogwoods, hastas, azaleas, camellias, hydrangeas, and more.  Even though that sounds like a lot, there are so many ways we can add more native flowers and trees to our property to make it ever more beautiful.  We would like to plant more rose bushes and trees down at the edge of the lawn, extend the Carriage House Garden around in front of the parking lot and plant more azaleas at the front of the house.  Planting new things that will last for years feels so good and gives us a sense of anticipation for every spring to see how beautiful all the colors will be each season.

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Where will we find all these new plants and trees, you might ask?  There are so many amazing places to learn about and buy plants in and around Waynesville.  Our favorite nurseries in the area include Rainbow Nursery on Old Balsam Road and Grass Root Garden Company on Dellwood City Road.  And recently, two great new shops have opened up close to the Inn that focus on gardening, house plants, seeds and flowers: Cultivate Garden Shop in Frog Level and Goldenrod Plant Boutique and Wine Bar.  And both serve tasty adult beverages!!  And the weekend farmers markets in both downtown Waynesville and Canton are great options as well to check out local farm and flower vendors.

And we'd be remiss if we didn't mention some of the great farms in our area that offer u-pick flower and other unique agritourism experiences.  Close to Waynesville, Pinnacle Farms near Barber Orchard Fruit stand is a great place to go for u-pick flowers and spectacular bouquets.  Over in Clyde, Wildcat Ridge Farm hosts the "Festival of Peonies in Bloom" each year in May.  If you love Peonies, this is a must-visit location in Haywood County.  And in Canton, the Ten Acre Garden is a great place to spend the afternoon in the spring.  They have u-pick flowers and berries, host events with music, wood-fired pizza, and sell fruits and veggies of all kinds.  It's a popular spot for locals to gather during the warmer months.

Other great options in the area to experience blooming flowers include the Lake Junaluska Rose Walk, and in Asheville, you might consider the North Carolina Arboretum, the Western North Carolina Farmers Market or the gorgeous gardens at the Biltmore Estate.

We hope you consider a trip to see our beautiful spring oasis here in Western North Carolina!

Your Innkeepers

--Brenda and Peter

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