FLETCHER, N.C. (828newsNOW) — An annual celebration of all things herbs returns to the Asheville area this weekend.
The 35th Asheville Spring Herb Festival will sprout up from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Friday, April 25 and Saturday, April 26 and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Sunday, April 27 at the WNC Agricultural Center Davis Event Center.
“If it’s herbs, it’s here,” the festival’s website banner reads. The motto should be taken seriously. Asheville Herb Festival will feature free admission, free workshops and herbs of all varieties sold by 77 different vendors sporting thousands of plant varieties.
“Herbal plants, vegetable starts, things like that, as well as edible flowers and decorative plants for the garden. Shrubs and small fruit-bearing trees and nut-bearing trees, pawpaws and things like that that are native to this area,” listed Andy Reed, manager of Asheville Herb Festival and executive director of the WNC Herb Marketing Association, the festival’s organizing body.
According to Reed, vendors may also come loaded with herbal products, selling everything from lavender soap to healing salves. Others will offer medicinal irises, worm castings for gardens and skin tightening makeup.
“Everything that can use herbs and especially uses herbs grown in this region. In western North Carolina, in Tennessee, in upstate South Carolina,” Reed said. “That’s our region that we cover.”
Herb workshops at this year’s festival include classes like “Homemade Herbal Mocktails,” “Backyard Wild Edibles – Eat Your Weeds!” and “The Doctrine of Signatures in Practice: How Plant Appearances Reveal Their Healing Properties.”
Check out the full workshop schedule here.
Asheville Herb Festival has been running since 1990, beginning as an afternoon set-up at a local farmer’s market. Over the years, the event has grown in stature and has occupied the WNC Ag Center since 2021.
Reed explained that the close relationship between the Asheville community and herbs has a three-pronged origin.
First, a century of state-supported tobacco farming led to a great number of small, family-owned farms all over the mountains. However, after health concerns led to anti-tobacco advocacy in the late 20th century, North Carolina stopped subsidizing tobacco growth, leading to a generation of farmers selling off their land.
Simultaneously, members of Gen X were hopping onboard the “back to nature” movement. With an enthusiasm for healthy living and additive-free food, Gen X farmers were able to buy the former tobacco farms and transform their land into fertile soil for heirloom vegetables and herbs.
“The third piece of the puzzle is that was right when Asheville was becoming a foodie town, and every restaurant wanted fresh, locally-sourced vegetables, and locally-sourced meat, and free-range chicken and eggs and natural herbs grown in the area that they could use for their cuisine,” Reed said. “Those three things started coming together in a way that just elevated the profile and the importance of herbs to a level that it had never been before.”
For more information about the Asheville Spring Herb Festival, visit www.ashevilleherbfestival.org.