Nursery Ledger No. 08 · Spring–Winter 2026 · Newland, North Carolina
An editorial ledger of the plant nurseries and garden centers of the North Carolina High Country — the state forests that built the regional stock, the working retail nurseries, the heirloom-vegetable line, the chrysanthemum growers, the rhododendron and native-azalea breeders, the Macintosh nursery heritage, the Christmas-tree farm, and the regional daylily growers.
The High Country nursery trade did not start in a garden center. It started in three state forests — Watauga County, Pisgah, and Bent Creek — where the forests themselves were the nursery and the chief product was seedlings shipped by rail to farms and woodlots across the eastern United States.
Three nurseries built the regional stock. Watauga County produced hardwood and conifer stock for mountain woodlots. Pisgah Forest Nursery became the largest hand-sown forest nursery in the country. Bent Creek carried USDA Appalachian research into commercial seedling production.
One of the earliest state-run seedling nurseries in the southern Appalachians. Set in cool, well-drained cove soils around Crossnore, it produced hardwood and white-pine stock for farm woodlots, soil-conservation plantings, and reforestation across the western counties.
Schenck's demonstration forest at the foot of Pilot Mountain became home to the largest hand-sown forest nursery in the country. At its peak it shipped roughly 25 million seedlings a year — white pine, loblolly, shortleaf, and hardwood — by rail across the Southeast.
The USDA's Appalachian research nursery, downstream of Asheville. Bridged academic forestry and commercial seedling production — provenance trials, disease-resistant strain selection, and matching tree species to Appalachian sites. Bent Creek stock underpins many working retail nurseries that came later.
Six working retail nurseries carry the High Country's plant trade today. Each has its own specialty, its own season, its own regulars. Together they cover landscape shrubs, perennials, natives, edible starts, and the regional Christmas-tree and mum stock.
The trade is not a chain. Six owner-operated garden centers, each within an hour of Boone, cover the regional plant market. B.B. Barns carries the broadest landscape line. Color Farm and Pan Branch lean into perennials and edibles. Garden Spot runs a plant-and-pumpkin operation into fall. Reems Creek is the Hendersonville-side specialist, and Appalachian Farms carries the heritage fruit-tree and berry stock.
The High Country's broadest garden center. B.B. Barns carries trees, shrubs, perennials, annuals, soils, and gift-shop across roughly 3 acres at elevation. The first stop for landscape contractors around Beech and Sugar Mountain, and the most reliable source in the region for cold-hardy cultivars rated for zones 5 and below.
A seasonal color specialist. The Color Farm builds hanging baskets, four-inch annual color, and the perennial backbone for mountain cottage gardens — coreopsis, echinacea, rudbeckia, lavender. Their May baskets open the gardening season from Sugar Mountain to Newland.
The High Country's strongest vegetable-and-herb line. The Pan Branch carries heirloom tomato and pepper starts, herb transplants, soft-fruit bushes, and the kitchen-garden backbone — asparagus, rhubarb, horseradish, comfrey. Their June transplant sale is the unofficial tomato-plant event of the season.
A working nursery and produce stand run by the same family since the early 1990s. Spring is annuals and starter perennials; summer is heirloom tomatoes and corn; September and October is the regional chrysanthemum-and-pumpkin operation.
The French Broad valley's deep-catalog nursery. Strong on Appalachian natives, organic soil amendments, and the perennial backbone — hellebores, heuchera, tiarella, native ferns, shade groundcovers. Their soil-mixing shed is a regional resource and their staff is the most botanically literate in the Asheville-side trade.
Specialist for heritage fruit trees, antique apples, and small-fruit stock. Appalachian Farms carries regional apple cultivars — Magnum Bonum, Virginia Beauty, Grimes Golden — alongside blueberry, blackberry, and elderberry propagation. Their March bare-root sale is the heritage-orchard event of the early season.
The High Country is one of the most active heirloom-vegetable regions in the eastern United States. The short, cool mountain season selects for early, cold-tolerant, disease-resistant cultivars — exactly the traits older family lines carry.
The Cherokee Purple tomato came through the Eastern Band; the Cherokee Trail of Tears bean is traded across seed-library shelves; Fish Lake Valley and other cold-tolerant corns are still grown on Beech Mountain. The Watauga County Library and Appalachian State maintain an active heirloom-seed library.
The signature heirloom of the southern Appalachians. A dusky-purple beefsteak with green shoulders and dense, sweet flesh. Carried west by Cherokee families and preserved in regional seed lines for over a hundred years. Performs well in cool mountain nights.
A black-seeded pole bean carried by the Eastern Band of Cherokee on the 1838 forced march. Productive in mountain gardens; eaten as a snap bean when young and dried for soup beans in fall.
A snap bean streaked purple on green, with a strong southern Appalachian presence. Reliable through July heat and dry August; a staple of the working home garden from Valle Crucis to Newland.
A short-season, cold-tolerant flour corn of the kind grown in the High Country since pre-contact times. Ground for cornmeal, used in ash cakes, and planted at higher elevations where sweet corns will not mature. Seed held at the Appalachian State sustainable-development farm.
The High Country holds the largest concentration of specialty garden chrysanthemum growers in the eastern United States. The cool nights, late-summer rain, and a first-frost date that lets flowers open slowly through October make it mums heaven.
Chrysanthemum culture in the High Country is its own discipline. Growers work the football mums, the spoons, the quills, the spiders, and the early-belting cascade types. Kings Mum and smaller growers on the Avery / Watauga / Mitchell county line have been at it for three decades; their stock goes to regional botanic gardens and fall mum shows from Raleigh to Roanoke.
| Class | Form | Bloom window |
|---|---|---|
| Football | Incurved giant bloom · 5–8 in | Late Oct · Show mums |
| Spoon | Recurved ray with spoon tip | Mid-Oct · Garden show |
| Spider | Long tubular ray, drooping | Late Oct · Specimen plant |
| Quill | Straight tubular ray, quill-like | Mid–Late Oct · Garden plant |
| Cascade | Trained weeping form, small bloom | Sep–Oct · Hanging baskets |
| Decorative | Incurved or reflexed, full-bodied | Sep–Oct · Garden backbone |
| Single | Daisy-form, prominent disc | Sep–Oct · Pollinator-friendly |
The southern Appalachians are the rhododendron capital of eastern North America. Six species are native to the High Country, and the breeding tradition around them is older than any American horticultural society.
Two traditions run in parallel. The elepidote rhododendron tradition — large-leaved, large-flowered evergreen hybrids — was built by growers around Biltmore from the 1920s forward. The native deciduous azalea tradition is older: R. calendulaceum (flame), R. cumberlandense, R. viscosum (swamp), and the early R. vaseyi from Pilot Mountain.
The signature evergreen rhododendron of the High Country — the species that whites the Craggies in early June and forms the parent of most modern ironclad hybrids. Native to the higher peaks from the French Broad south; cold-hardy and the foundation of nearly every lepidote hybrid grown north of zone 6.
The deciduous native azalea that paints the Pisgah and the Roan in yellow, orange, and scarlet in late May. Highly variable in the wild, with named selections ('Cherokee', 'Kelsey's Flame', 'Smoky Mountain') entering regional trade. Crosses with other native azaleas yield the Exbury and Knap Hill hybrids.
The High Country's earliest-blooming native azalea — soft pink, slightly fragrant, blooming before leaf-out on the upper slopes of Pilot Mountain. Endangered in the wild but a reliable garden subject; one of the parents of the early Ghent hybrids.
The great evergreen thicket-former of the northern Appalachians — the species that closes the high coves in July. Larger-leaved than R. catawbiense; flowers smaller and later. Natural hybrids enter the trade as 'maximum x catawbiense' selections.
The Macintosh Nursery was, for a quarter century in the early twentieth century, the largest mail-order nursery in the southeastern United States. Based in the upper mountains with deep reach into the High Country apple trade, it set the standard for the regional nursery catalog.
The Macintosh Nursery Company, founded near Crossnore in the 1880s, shipped fruit trees, ornamentals, and roses by rail across the southern Appalachians. Its catalogs — in the Watauga County Public Library's NC Room — document the regional apple-and-pear trade at its peak. Many surviving old orchard trees on Beech Mountain, in the New Garden community, and in the Hendersonville apple belt are Macintosh stock.
Reached its peak in the early twentieth century. Shipped fruit trees, shade trees, and ornamental shrubs by rail across the Southeast, with a regional specialty in apple, pear, and cherry cultivars adapted to mountain soils. Many High Country orchards were planted to Macintosh stock.
Several heritage apple cultivars entered the High Country through the Macintosh trade and remain in production: Magnum Bonum, Virginia Beauty, Grimes Golden, King David, Stayman Winesap. The Hendersonville belt and smaller Avery / Watauga orchards still grow trees on Macintosh rootstocks; today's regional cider is often a Macintosh-line blend.
The Crossnore-area orchards were the institutional heart of the regional apple trade before the Hendersonville belt expanded. Many have gone back to forest, but the 1890s and 1900s variety trials established what grew well where.
The High Country is the heart of the North Carolina Christmas-tree industry. Ashe County alone produces roughly a million Fraser firs a year — more than any single county in the United States. The trade is both a regional tradition and the most important horticultural crop in the mountains.
The High Country's Fraser fir (Abies fraseri) is the species that built the trade. Native only to the highest peaks — Mount Mitchell, the Roan, Grandfather — it was brought into plantation cultivation in the 1950s and 1960s. Ashe, Avery, Watauga, and Alleghany counties now ship it nationwide.
| County | Primary species | Approx. annual harvest |
|---|---|---|
| Ashe | Fraser fir | ~1.0 million trees |
| Avery | Fraser fir | ~250,000 trees |
| Watauga | Fraser fir | ~200,000 trees |
| Alleghany | Fraser fir + White pine | ~150,000 trees |
| Jackson | Fraser fir | ~80,000 trees |
| Mitchell | Fraser fir | ~60,000 trees |
| State total | Fraser fir dominant | ~1.8–2.0 million trees |
The daylily (Hemerocallis) is the regional perennial. A half-dozen High Country growers maintain hybridizing programs of regional note; their cultivars are shipped across the eastern U.S. and registered with the American Hemerocallis Society.
Daylily hybridizing is concentrated in a small group of growers who breed for cold tolerance, rebloom, and the clean colors that hold in cooler nights. Cultivar names like Blue Ridge, New River, Grandfather, and Linville mark the breeders' lineage.
Several programs register new cultivars annually with the American Hemerocallis Society. Goals are consistent: extend bloom season into August and September at 3,000 to 4,000 feet, select for cold-hardy foliage that holds into late fall, and develop the clean oranges, pinks, and near-whites that hold color in cool mountain nights.
Heritage extends past the daylily. Hellebores — the Lenten rose — are a regional specialty, blooming through snow in February. Heuchera and Tiarella are native-foliage perennials hybridized at regional nurseries. Hosta breeding continues in cooler gardens, with cultivars selected for slug-resistance.
Regional growers host open-garden days during the July bloom peak. Visitors walk labeled rows of named cultivars, talk breeding lines with growers, and order divisions for fall planting. The Bloom Walk is the central recruitment path for new regional gardeners.
North Carolina Christmas Tree Association — Ashe County based. Blue Ridge Daylily Society — AHS chapter. American Rhododendron Society, SE Chapter — flower shows and cultivar trials. Blue Ridge Apple Growers — heritage-cultivar preservation.
Watauga County Public Library, NC Room — Macintosh Nursery catalog collection and orchard history. Pack Memorial, Asheville — Biltmore horticulture archive. NC State Extension, Watauga County — current variety-trial data.
The current-year catalogs of B.B. Barns, Reems Creek, Appalachian Farms, and the regional daylily growers are the most useful references on what is actually in stock and what grows well in the High Country today. A plant carried by three of the six has proven itself at elevation.