2012 Asheville Garden Bloggers Fling - Day 1, mid-day

After the creative recycling exuberance of the morning gardens on our tour, we headed over to the mellow kitchen garden at Sunny Point Cafe. With an enviable sizable plot next to the restaurant, Sunny Point Cafe is able to grow much of its produce steps away from the kitchen. Can't get much fresher than that. 

Next up we visited the wonderland of Wamboldtopia. Combine one part smuggler's cave, one part medieval church, one part industrial-revolution factory, and one part elfin enclave and you have Wamboldtopia.

One of the owners of Womboldtopia, Ricki Pierce, aka "The Rock Pirate" - is an obvious virtuoso of rock placement and stone masonry.  

I'm not sure who convinced Helen Yoest and myself to pose on the Rock Pirate truck but I was obviously into it. And we hadn't even had drinks yet. 

For lunch we headed over to Curve Studios, a set of warehouses transformed into wonderful gallery spaces and surrounded by beautiful gardens. 

I love this use of prefabricated steel mesh to create walls to the edible garden that keep critters out but allow lots of light in. 

It was a lovely place for lunch! Next we headed over for a pleasant stroll at the North Carolina Arboretum. I'll save those photos for the next post!

2012 Asheville Garden Bloggers Fling - Day 1, morning

Oh hey. What's up? It's been awhile. Hope you all have been well. Me? Oh, well the last couple of years have been kind of crazy. We sold our house, bought a new one. I've been growing my garden design business like mad, raising a kid, raising a dog. And in my spare time last year I was working with a great team, organizing the San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling. It's all been a lot of fun but I haven't had much time to share things on this blog. I've been posting a lot on my Instagram feed but camera phone photos are terrible and I miss my big girl camera. It's time to haul that DSL monster out again and start sharing photos of my new garden, not to mention all the other fun plant-y places I go. But first things first - I'm an orderly person and I feel the need to pick up where I left off - Asheville. Right after I got back from the Asheville Garden Bloggers Fling things went coo-coo for cocoa puffs so I never got to post any photos from my visit there.

So, let's take a trip back in time...the year was 2012 and we'd just exited the bus for our first tour, Christopher Mello's garden. Now it was my understanding that this was not only Christopher's garden but also a site that hosted gatherings and creative events for youths. It was certainly a very playful garden - not only all the Tonka trucks but the playful color combos in the plantings, the recycled bits of rusty machinery and all the vibrant bottle trees.

These are the blue poppies that Chris had selected and seems to have stabilized the color. I wish I had gotten some seed. 

The next garden we visited was of a similar vein, combining gardens with a place to be creative. The Burton Street Community Peace Gardens were created from an abandoned lot and allowed neighbors to grow veggies in raised beds and provided a safe space for kids to explore, create and learn. I have to admit I found the recycled-multi-media sculpture/play areas endlessly fascinating. 

Patron saint Fred Sanford:

In the next post I'll cover our mid-day visits to two eateries and the pirate wonderland Wamboldtopia.