I’ve been writing this column for over a year and a half and every plant that I have highlighted and celebrated evolved and co-evolved in the bioregion of Southern Appalachia.

There are so many different native plants and flowers that I have yet to see growing in the wild. And I really want to.

The annual Haywood County Extension Master Gardener Plant Sale is now underway, with orders due pre-paid by Friday, March 8. 

Learn how to give your fruit trees some love with a workshop starting at 10 a.m. Saturday, Feb. 3, at Winding Stair Nursery in Franklin. 

The growing season is winding down, but Haywood County Master Gardeners are still available to answer questions about all manner of plant-related issues. 

This time of year, as the wind rustles the leaves and the shadows begin to elongate as the sun lingers lower on the horizon, the veil between the worlds seems to grow thinner and thinner.

Ricardo Fernandez Battini and his wife Suzanne Fernandez spent a stormy night in September 2004 holed up in their home along the Pigeon River in Crabtree, listening.

Among the many plants that signify the start of summer, perhaps none is more showy than St. John’s wort (Hypericum spp.)

For the past few years, whenever I encounter the whorled loosestrife growing along a trail or roadside I have been saying its name out loud, and slowly. Like a prayer: “World, lose strife.”

Plants and butterflies have a long history of evolution and interconnected relationships. Plants serve as food for caterpillars who eat their leaves to gain energy for their growth and transformations. This co-evolved host-plant relationship mostly occurs between native plants and native caterpillars. Many butterflies depend on this relationship for their lives.