Useful Plants Nursery

10/28/2025

Locals help to beautify the UPN by planting several young blueberry bushes near the main greenhouse!

05/01/2025

Headed to Growing In The Mountains Spring Plant and Art Festival this weekend with many gorgeous, useful Plants, including the giant Concord grapes and Goumi Trees pictured here!

04/16/2025

Some of our figs are already beginning to fruit!

04/16/2025

These figs are lookin' pretty far out, man!

04/12/2025

Good news! Today we discovered that several of our Figs have grown over a foot tall. They have also leafed out and are looking great!!!!!**

Currently available for purchase:
15 Brown Turkey Figs in 1 gallon pots for $25
20 Celeste figs in 1 gallon pots for $25

Figs grow best in Zone 7B and warmer, however, many of our customers from Asheville say their figs are thriving despite the elevation. In my opinion, this may be an example what is sometimes called the "Heat Island" effect, in which the mass of city materials (concrete, people in close quarters) creates heat in certain highly populated areas, causing the emergence of warmer "micro-climates" within cooler areas.

This ISN'T to say that all Asheville areas are suitable for growing thriving fig trees. Only that many of our customers from Asheville have reported that they are able to grow figs in their specific area.

Lyndon
live long and prosper !!

01/08/2025

It’s Winter Here at the Nursery!

A burst of cold weather has the staff at the Useful Plants Nursery on their toes and hopping, as we move hundreds of blueberries, elderberries, kiwis, and chestnuts into the greenhouses before the impending record low temperatures.

Plants that could not be moved in time to avoid the cold were nestled together and covered with frost blankets. Plants maintain some heat in their roots during cold seasons. Gathering pots close together and covering them can actually help them to survive inclement weather.

It has been a challenge checking off all of the items on the winter to-do list here at UPN.

Looking forward to spring, as we will have a new crop of plants. In addition to our full lineup of edible fruit and nut trees and bushes, we will also replenish our stock of Goumis, grafted Paw Paws and hardy citrus (Flying dragons and Yuzu).

Keep all your plants with good mulch around your trees, shrubs and Bushes. I recommend hardwood mulch, three inches thick, out to the dripline. Keep the Mulch three-inches away from the trunk of the plant.

We're still raising funds for our economic losses due to Hurricane Helene, and we appreciate your generous donations. These funds help us purchase plants, materials and plant care products to keep our business going while the region recovers.

Live long and prosper peacefully. Stay warm out there!

Lyndon and the Nursery Crew

12/14/2024

Finally, Useful Plants Nursery is open for business! Thanks to FEMA, the State of North Carolina, local and itinerate volunteers like the Cajun Navy, dozens of hard working Earthaveners, and your donations, we're ready to receive customers and bring plenty of plants to upcoming spring events.

Thanks to a GoFundMe started by our friend, Amy Belanger, we got two of our three greenhouses repaired, braced, and covered with poly plastic — just in time!

The late November cold brought temperatures to our area of 17F. The most serious damage this cold brings to our plants is to their roots. So the plants that are potted and kept above ground especially need to be protected, either inside a greenhouse or covered with frost blankets.

The GoFundMe donations allowed Useful Plants Nursery to purchase the materials and hire the helpers to make the repairs to our greenhouses so we could protect these precious plants for the winter. We are grateful! So many other businesses and homes in Western North Carolina lacked the support they needed to recover from the impacts of the hurricane. To pay it forward, we have been volunteering with road clearing, at other farms, at distribution hubs, and more.

We've spent much of the past two months potting up goumis, paw paws, and citrus to be sold in the late winter or spring. These are meant to be planted from early spring (goumi's, apples, and blueberries) to summer (figs, pawpaws, etc).

Thanks to community support, we will be ready to start selling plants in the spring, both from the nursery and at plants sales, including Asheville HerbFest (April 25th-27th), the Organic Grower's School (March 14-16), Growing in the Mountains Spring Plant Sale (May 2-4), and Black Mountain Garden Sale (May 12).

I'm not surprised this intensity of weather has happened, given what we know about climate change. The scientific community warned us about this for more than 40 years. We at Earthaven have been living a largely self-sufficient, land based life for 30 of those years. We have been preparing for events like energy shortages by developing solar and hydro power. We have been building and maintaining our own roads, harvesting our own lumber, and growing our food. We were more prepared than most.

Let's hope the region takes this disaster as an opportunity to build back with greater climate resilience. We aim to do that, too.

If you would like to stay connected to UPN, please sign up for our newsletter at www.usefulplants.org. Plants are available at the nursery by appointment until the first week of March, when our regular hours resume (Weds, Thurs, Sat, 10 am - 3:30 pm). The nursery is located 15 miles South of Old Fort off Camp Elliot Rd (see website for details and directions: www.usefulplants.org ).

Live long and prosper!
Lyndon Felps, Primate

Please donate and share our GoFundMe: www.gofundme.com/f/usefulplants

11/20/2024

We're making progress! Plant sales will resume soon.

The road and bridges to the nursery are nearly temporarily passable for customers. Our resident roads & bridges team is working daily to clear debris, and pack soil, stone, and gravel into place on the roads and bridges. Over the next couple of days, loads of gravel will be poured on the Crystal Bridge, then packed down. We'll announce when this work is complete and customers can visit the nursery.

In the past few weeks, using bamboo from the land, Lyndon and friends reconstructed the greenhouse that will keep several dozen baby fig trees warm during the colder months to come! With the bones of the structure mostly in place, the next step is to cover rough or jagged areas that might snag plastic as it is pulled over and fixed to either side. To do this, we will use mostly natural materials (burlap, h**p rope if we can get some). Lyndon calls this "software engineering."

Thank you to all the supporters of plants, permaculture, Earthaven, and Lyndon who are donating to help Useful Plants Nursery get through this setback!

Hurricane Helene delivered catastrophic winds, flooding, and … Amy Belanger needs your support for Aid Useful Plants Nursery's Recovery After Hurricane Helene

11/19/2024

We're excited to announce the arrival of thirty Honeyberry plants for sale at $30-$40 each.

Honeyberries are a sweet, tangy fruit that can be likened to a blueberry in taste. High in antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals, they make a healthy and tasty treat to snack on, and can be used in desserts, placed on ice cream, and used to make preserves.

Honeyberries are a cold-hardy, zone 2 plant and are a particular favorite in the northern climates where other berries don’t grow as well. Honeyberries grow best with more than one plant/variety present.

The nursery is also selling Northern and Rabbit Eye Blueberries, as well as Chestnuts.

Be aware that the berry plants have lost most of their leaves (see photo), and this is typical as cooler weather sets in. The leaves will return in the Spring.

To purchase these plants, please call (828) 778-0773 (cell), leave a voicemail at (828) 669-6517 (landline) to set an appointment to come to the nursery.

Pictured is one of our nursery team, Richardson.

10/18/2024

Hurricane Helene delivered catastrophic winds, flooding, and tree-fall; damaged our water lines; and washed out the roads and bridges to Useful Plants Nursery. While our greenhouses and plants survived, our business losses are substantial.

We are grateful that our teams are all safe, housed, and fed. We are in sorrow for the loss of life, property, and normalcy in Western North Carolina.

We at Useful Plants Nursery were spared the worst. Our teams spent these past few weeks helping the ecovillage where we're located and surrounding communities clear roads and rooftops, repair water lines and a hydroelectric system, and other support. The roads into Earthaven and Useful Plants Nursery are now passable but vulnerable.

Our attention turns now to stabilizing our economic situation, finding innovative ways to prepare for next season, and hopefully, generating enough support that we can pay the workers who depend on us and purchase the supplies, plants, and equipment needed to stay in business.

Donations will be used for:

- Repairs to buildings, water lines, and other infrastructure
- Buying necessary supplies and materials
- Restocking plants
- Advertising plant sales when they resume
- Paying workers to tend plants, make repairs, and prepare for the next season while no sales are possible

We extend our deepest gratitude to those who helped grow Useful Plants Nursery into a thriving source of permaculture-based plants and education. And we thank you now for coming to our aid in a time of crisis. We are determined to restore access, plants stocks, and functionality as quickly as possible. We will live long and prosper.

Please share this post to help sustain one of the few permaculture based nurseries in the region.

Lyndon Felps, Owner/Manager
Useful Plants Nursery
Black Mountain, NC
www.usefulplants.org

Hurricane Helene delivered catastrophic winds, flooding, and … Amy Belanger needs your support for Aid Useful Plants Nursery's Recovery After Hurricane Helene

05/14/2024

We just had a fabulous weekend at The Whole Bloomin' Thing festival in Waynesville, and we're ready to receive visitors this week at Useful Plants Nursery, 20 minutes South of Black Mountain & Old Fort. If you're still looking for your spring & summer garden's fruit trees and berry plants, we've got you covered! www.usefulplants.org

Here's a partial list of our available plants.
- Northern & southern blueberries, many rabbit-eye varieties
- Dunston Chestnuts
- Aronias (Chokeberries)
- Apples
- Muscadine grapes
- Blackberries
- Raspberries
- Steven's Cranberries and Highbush Cranberries
- Goji berries
- Elderberries
- Flying Dragon and Yuzu Ichandrin Hardy Citrus varieties
- Pomegranates
- Pawpaws
- Horsetail
- Strawberries
- Ground cover raspberries
- Honeyberries
- And many more!