In Asheville: On Wednesdays at 5 pm pick up plants at Greenlife.
Deliveries: We deliver plants up to four hours away from our nursery for a distance-based delivery fee. Share the delivery fee with your friends or neighbors and get a discount by arranging a group order! |
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See our curriculum of classes on the website. Bring Chuck in for a private consultation on any of these topics or arrange for a small or large group class. More info? Click here. |
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With a UPN gift certificate, the recipient can get just what they want when they are ready to plant.
Or, let your friends and family know that you'd like a UPN gift certificate for a special tree, bush, or other useful plant.
Gift certificates are available in any denomination of $5.00 or more. We will send a paper certificate in the US mail. If you prefer, we can send a PDF file that you or your recipient can print.
You can pay for gift certificates with a credit card through our secure website, or contact us at info@usefulplants.org or (828) 669-6517 for other options.
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We're thrilled to offer the following videos:
To order a DVD containing the Plant Jam videos, see our website.
Facebook
Useful Plants Nursery is on Facebook! Be a friend and/or fan, hook up with other Useful Plants people, and share your stories. |
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Useful Plants Nursery is a small, permaculture-based nursery specializing in useful, phytonutritional, food, and medicine plants well-adapted to our Southern Appalachian mountains and surrounding bioregions. Our plants are grown without the use of synthetic pesticides at our nursery located at Earthaven Ecovillage.
Useful Plants Nursery is owned by Chuck Marsh and Debbie Lienhart, and operated with the help of Troy, Liz, Lily, and Gabriel.
I believe that growing your own food and medicine plants is a vitally important strategy and practice for regaining control over our collective and personal lives, our health, and our individual and bioregional economic well being. Our nursery is dedicated to putting those beliefs into practice and truly creating "Liberation through Abundance" as we serve your needs for healthy, useful landscape plants, and work together to reweave the web of life.
-- Chuck Marsh, nurseryperson, permaculture designer, bioregional inhabitant
UPN is a North Carolina certified nursery.
To see a full list of our plants, click here.
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Useful Plants Nursery
111 Another Way
Black Mountain, NC 28711
828.669.6517
www.usefulplants.org
info@usefulplants.org |
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We hope you are enjoying the New Year! The weather has been mild enough to continue planting through the winter, so it's still a great time to plant.
Useful Plants on the road
We're looking forward to spring, when we pack up the plants and take them to festivals. This year we are expanding our reach to include Virginia and Georgia, in addition to North and South Carolina. To see when we'll be in your area, check out the schedule on our website.
Angier Neighborhood Garden Farm
Our friends at Bountiful Backyards in Durham are raising funds for a new community garden. They have raised the money for the land itself - now they are looking for donations to hook up the water and start building. To see more info about this project and contribute, see their Kickstarter Campaign.
Fruit nuts on the loose
The Buncombe Fruit Nuts are at it again - planning for new public plantings in the greater Asheville area. For more information, see the article by Bill Whipple in this newsletter or read the Fruit Nut blog.
To get in on the fun, join the Google group.
Plant Jam DVD available
We now have a DVD containing the Plant Jam videos. Having the videos on DVD is great if you have a slower internet connection. The DVD is only $10, plus $2 for shipping in the US. To order, see our website. |
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This time of year Western North Carolina is blessed with many workshops and events designed to bring together plant enthusiasts and help us learn new schools.
Virginia Biological Farming Conference, February 10-11, Richmond, VA - The theme for this year's conference is "Transitioning to Organic Agriculture." Debbie will be there with the Useful Plants.
The Forest Economy: Growing Bioregional Business Niches, February 18, Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, NC - The morning will feature presentations on Permaculture forestry and Land-based Economic Niches for WNC, followed by a hands-on afternoon planting a forest garden at the university.
Organic Growers School, March 3-4, UNCA, Asheville, NC - The official start of spring. Chuck and Debbie will be teaching a class on backyard orcharding and Chuck will teach a workshop on Permaculture and human nutrition. We'll bring a big bunch of our Useful Plants too!
Fruit School, March and April, Hendersonville and Durham NC - Professor T. Bud Barkslip, aka Bill Whipple, has added new classes to fruit school this year, including a new advanced weekend, and is taking the school on the road to Durham. See an article by Bill later in this newsletter.
Check our website for additional events: http://www.usefulplants.org
Ready to plant now?
The weather this winter has been unusually cooperative for winter planting in our area. If you would like plants, give us a call at 828-669-6517 or send a message by email to arrange to pick up plants or have them delivered. |
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Where in the world is Chuck Marsh? |
UPN founder, Chuck Marsh, continues to travel around the world sharing Permaculture approaches and learning traditional agricultural practices.
In December Chuck taught a Permaculture Design course and consulted with local farmers in Jamaica.
This month, Chuck is back in Africa working with extension agents, agricultural scientists, and members of a farmer's coop in Angola. He plans to introduce Permaculture strategies and techniques for improving soil and designing production systems. While there, he also hopes to learn their traditional agricultural methods. He is bringing the gift of open-pollinated seeds from Sow True Seed with him.
Chuck's assistant, Michael, is managing Chuck's calendar. To schedule consulting for spring, send us a message by email. |
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Omnivore pressure ravages public edible plantings around Asheville |
by Bill Whipple
 There seems to be increasing omnivore pressure on fruit and nuts growing in the edible parks, as well as around the town of Asheville. Spottings of these varmits have been made and they are generally described as “fuzzy”, “lanky”, with “agile purple and red hands”, darkened teeth, and “many pouches.” Prehensile tails have not been identified due to either non existence or retraction while foraging. It is often the case to come upon a fruit tree in the city of Asheville and notice a lack of ripe fruit above and well worn sod and ripped up leaves underneath. The city’s animal services department has been alerted and efforts are being made to determine the nature of these creatures. Though they forage during the day, they have been known to be nocturnal as well. Sometimes seen cooperating in packs, sometimes single males, but general reports claim they are so content in their activities of foraging, they pay little attention to passerbys, tourists, or wildlife enthusiasts who marvel at their audacity and worry if the food they are eating in fact is edible.
It seems early on in the history of edible parks much of the fruit fell on the floor as people couldn’t believe that something edible could come without plastic packaging or that God itself had spoken and forbidden it. The “one bite” disease followed where copious amounts of fruit would be on the ground inflicted with the tell tale “bite” taken out of it. Close observation showed this was found with fruit that tended to be either green or needed to ripen off the tree for a few days like with the cornelian cherry.
As time has progressed and the trees grew considerably taller due to the fatally flawed “forest garden“ design concept, a new breed of omnivore has come out of the wild edges to risk life and limb for this once “forbidden “ fruit. Conservationists are concerned at the “lankiness” of these creatures and fear if a hard winter were to ever hit it might mean a large die back. Clearly more public fruit trees and nuts are needed around town. If these creatures could ever be trained to plant trees themselves the project could very well be self sustaining. Efforts are being made by groups such as the Buncombe County Fruit Nuts Club to plant more edible fruit trees and nuts around town in public places, schools, churches, and parks. Unfortunately they are limited in their effectiveness by the club’s number of members and the cities’ weedeaters. This can be easily rectified by going to Google groups, looking up buncombe fruit nuts, and joining the club.
Bill Whipple is an “irregular” writer for UPN, but is eating more fruit and other roughage to deal with it. He will be running the 6th annual Barkslips’s Fruit School this spring in Hendersonville, NC, Durham, NC, and in also West Virginia, with a new “advanced fruit school” in Asheville. For details, see Barkslip.com. |
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