Garden Party Fundraiser - Dinner, Music, Garden and Milkweed Meadow tours, Pick your own cut flowers.  

The Asheville Botanical Garden and numerous local plant vendors will offer a wide variety of native trees, shrubs, and flowers for fall planting. Signs will direct customers to the garden’s parking lot and to the designated overflow parking area at UNCA. Overflow parking lot is located at UNCA at 118 W.T. Weaver Blvd

Grab your binoculars because it’s migration celebration time! Our annual feathered frenzy is back, and you’re invited to join the fun.  Celebrate the magic of fall bird and butterfly migration with a full day of family-friendly activities, live raptor demonstrations, beginner bird walks, a hawk watch, and so much more. Whether you’re a seasoned birder or just bird-curious, this is our biggest birding event of the year and you won’t want to miss it!

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Day with us at the Hendersonville Farmers Market. From the upbeat rhythms to the delicious baked goods, connect, celebrate, and share in the joy of heritage and community spirit! Visit the Milkweed Meadows Farm tent to view Monarch life cycle educational displays, purchase native milkweeds + other pollinator-friendly plants, and participate in the Symbolic Monarch Migration art activity for kids. 

Live music, education activities celebrating our pollinators, native plants, and much more!

Celebrate the monarch butterfly during its migration and bring attention to the species’ declining numbers. Gorges State Park lies along the monarch’s migratory route. The butterflies can be seen in late September each year flying over the park’s visitor center on their way south to the high-elevation fir forests of Mexico’s Neovolcanic Mountains, where they overwinter until early spring.

Visit the Blue Ridge Community College Horticulture Program’s Fall Plant Sale being held as part of Farm City Day at Jackson Park.  Mums, fall asters, violas, pansies, mixed fall planters, perennials, shrubs, trees and succulents are perfect for gift giving. Many natives to support pollinators will also be available, including several hard-to-find species.

October is a busy time for monarch butterflies as they undergo their fall migration from Eastern North America to Mexico.  Western North Carolina is a pit stop for some of these travelers. Celebrate these colorful creatures with an amazing collection of activities and events.  Blue Ridge Naturalist instructor, Dan Lazar, is scheduled to speak.