Useful Plants Nursery - plants for edible landscapes
What's new!
Plant Jam DVD!
Now you can have all of our instructional videos on a DVD! These are the same videos as on our website, but with the DVD you can watch them on a DVD player or on a computer that doesn't have high-speed Internet.
The DVD is only $10 plus $2 to cover sales tax and postage. Order yours here:
The DVD contains:
- Planting a shrub or fruit tree with Chuck Marsh and a Nanking cherry
- Planting a blueberry bush with Chuck Marsh and a blueberry plant
- Pruning young fruit trees with Chuck Marsh and a couple apple trees
- Pruning trees into bushes with Debbie Lienhart and some mulberry trees/shrubs
- Pruning young blueberry bushes with Troy Swift and a blueberry plant
- Pruning mature blueberries
- Pinch pruning with Chuck Marsh and a whole cast of plants
- Pruning muscadine grapes
- Taking care of blackberries with Chuck Marsh in Marjorie's blackberry patch
- A shorter version of taking care of blackberries with Chuck
- Taking care of blackberries (follow up)
- Tuck your figs in for the winter with Chuck Marsh and a couple fig trees
- Winter protection for small figs with Chuck Marsh and some smaller fig plants
- Untucking figs after winter - see which protection methods worked the best
Festival schedule
You can find Useful Plants at the following plant sales this spring. If you would like us to bring plants especially for you, contact us a few days ahead of time.
| Date | Event | Location |
|---|---|---|
| February 10-11 | Virginia Biological Farming Conference | Richmond, VA |
| March 3-4 | Organic Growers School Chuck and Debbie will also be presenters. |
UNCA, Asheville |
| March 30-31 | Forsyth Spring Plant and Garden Sale | Cumming Fairgrounds, Cumming, GA |
| April 19-22 | Midlands Plant & Flower Festival* (unconfirmed) | SC State Farmers Market, Columbia, SC |
| April 17-28 | Growing in the Mountains | WNC Farmers Market, Asheville, NC |
| May 3-6 | Piedmont Plant & Flower Festival* (unconfirmed) | Greenville State Farmers Market, Greenville, SC |
| May 4-6 | Asheville Herb Festival | WNC Farmers Market, Asheville, NC |
| May 20-23 | 2012 NC Master Gardener Conference | Asheville, NC |
Useful Plants gift certificates!
Give the gift that keeps giving for years to come. With a UPN gift certificate, your recipient can choose the plants they want when they are ready to plant them.
Special - for gift certificates of $100 or more, we'll include the Plant Jam DVD!
It's time to protect tender plants!
With winter approaching, now is the time to consider protecting plants that aren't hardy in your area. Where we are, that includes figs and pomegranates, along with newly planted Asian persimmons and citrus. We have a couple videos showing different methods for protecting figs, with another video in the spring showing how each method worked:
- Tuck your figs in for the winter with Chuck Marsh and a couple fig trees
- Winter protection for small figs with Chuck Marsh and some smaller fig plants
- Untucking figs after winter - see which protection methods worked the best
The winter blanket material we like is available in large rolls for the nursery industry. We haven't seen it available in smaller sizes for homeownders, so we have put together winter protection kits that contain a piece of blanket that will work for a plant up to 6' tall. Each kit contains:
- 6x10.5 foot piece of 6 oz winter protection blanket, as shown in the winter protection videos.
- 20' of the strapping used in the videos. We like the flat strapping, rather than round rope, because the flat side doesn't cut into the bark.
- 6 sod staples for attaching the wrapped blanket to the ground.
Each kit is $25 + tax. We can ship these kits and charge the actual shipping cost. Shipping has been about $13 for the first one and $2-3 for each additional one. If you would like to order a kit, please contact us with the email contact form.
Plant Jam videos
Our Plant Jam video series continues expanding:
- Planting a shrub or fruit tree with Chuck Marsh and a Nanking cherry
- Pruning young fruit trees with Chuck Marsh and a couple apple trees
- Pruning trees into bushes with Debbie Lienhart and some mulberry trees/shrubs
- Pruning young blueberry bushes with Troy Swift and a blueberry plant
- Pruning mature blueberries
- Planting a blueberry bush with Chuck Marsh and a blueberry plant
- Pinch pruning with Chuck Marsh and a whole cast of plants
- Taking care of blackberries with Chuck Marsh in Marjorie's blackberry patch
- Taking care of blackberries (follow up)
- A shorter version of taking care of blackberries with Chuck
- Tuck your figs in for the winter with Chuck Marsh and a couple fig trees
- Winter protection for small figs with Chuck Marsh and some smaller fig plants
- Untucking figs after winter - see which protection methods worked the best
- Pruning muscadine grapes
- Greenhouse timelapse
Plant deliveries to the Greenlife parking lot
We deliver plants to Asheville once a week, at 5 pm on Wednesdays, to the lower Greenlife parking lot. If you would like us to bring plants especially for you, call us at (828) 669-6517 at least by the Monday before. See our delivery section for details.
Custom deliveries are available. The delivery charge is based on the distance from our nursery near Black Mountain, subject to minimum order size. Organize a group order and share the delivery charge! See our delivery section for details. Call (828) 669-6517 to schedule a delivery.
Subscribe to the Useful Plants newsletter!
Our newsletter is a great source of information about useful plants, their incorporation into landscapes, and what we are doing to make the world a more abundant place to inhabit. Thanks for reading!
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. 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