The North Fulton Master Gardeners will hold the 23rd annual Garden Faire from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 20, at The Grove at Wills Park in Alpharetta.
The year’s Garden Faire will have a large selection of plantings available for one-stop shopping, according to a press release.
The North Fulton Master Gardeners are partnering with the Georgia North Metro Atlanta Chapter of the Native Plant Society and the Alpharetta Community Agriculture Program for the event. All proceeds from the plant sale support community education efforts and project gardens supported by these organizations.
Master Gardeners and other gardening experts will help shoppers find the right plants for their gardens, such as flowering plants to attract butterflies, water-wise landscape choices, heirloom plants, herbs, veggies, and more.
Admission is free to the Garden Faire, which will be at 175 Roswell St., Alpharetta.
Williams said some people confuse the Master Gardeners with a garden club, but they are volunteers certified by the UGA Extension to be a resource for the horticultural community.
Williams spends her time with Sandy Springs projects. Her first project nine years ago was the community garden at the North Fulton Annex. She and the extension agent opened up some compost bins for the garden, which had 55 beds that were rented out to Fulton County residents.
At the start of the pandemic, they tried “Food for the Hungry Beds” to grow vegetables to take to local food pantries. Some donations were made to the Atlanta Food Bank and some to Solidarity Sandy Springs. But while those garden beds were productive for one person, it was harder to try mass production.
Since then, she’s been working with other Master Gardners at the National Park Service to restore gardens a the entrance of the Island Ford Unit of the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area. Recently, she and her fellow gardeners planted hundreds of Christmas tree ferns.
Master Gardeners are also helping to renovate the flower garden at the historic Lost Corners Preserve. Volunteers have spent more than 400 hours at the cottage working on plant grooming, mulching, planting/transplanting of southern heritage perennials, and signage development and sourcing. None of this work would be possible without fundraising such as the Garden Faire, Williams said.
Garden Faire features
The Pass-Along Plant Sale features plantings curated from the Master Gardener’s gardenscapes. Plants include daylilies, flowering perennials, ground covers, hostas, iris, and other perennial plants, along with select shrubs and trees.
Fulton County Schools’ Teaching Museum North Greenhouse hosts gardening education classes that the Master Gardeners hold for students. It also grows plantings to support educational activities. Plantings for sale from the greenhouse will include dozens of varieties of coleus, hanging ferns, geraniums, begonias, tomatoes, peppers, and a large variety of annuals. An herbs selection also will be available.
Look for this year’s special heirloom tomatoes and peppers that will include beefsteak, cherry, and paste tomatoes and peppers. New for this year is a variety of dwarf tomatoes that can be grown in pots with six to eight hours of sun.
Native perennials, shrubs, vines, and trees will be featured by the North Metro Atlanta Chapters of the Georgia Native Plant Society, with approximately 2,000 plants available.
The Alpharetta Community Agriculture Program will have approximately 5,000 unique varieties of organic, heirloom, and non-GMO plants grown from seed at Old Rucker Farm.