UT Gardens ready for annual Bloomsday fest this weekend
Photo by J. Miles Cary
The University of Tennessee Gardens have benefited from the rain we’ve been receiving and are in full bloom for the Blooms Days Festival Saturday and Sunday. The gardens are open for tours during the festival
Photo by J. Miles Cary
Retired UT botany professor Alan Heilman sets up to take a photo in the UT Gardens.
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Climb a tree. Learn to grow bananas or make a rain barrel. Stop and smell the roses.
The University of Tennessee Gardens' annual Blooms Days Festival and Marketplace, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday, combines garden-focused workshops and shopping with family activities and live music. Tickets are $6 at the gardens off Neyland Drive; children 12 and younger are admitted free. Organizers hope at least 3,000 people attend the event.
More than 50 vendors will sell plants, jewelry, art, hammocks, soap, birdhouses, fountains and garden statues at the marketplace. New $5-a-person tree-climbing classes are 10 a.m.-1 p.m. and 2-6 p.m. Saturday and 1-4 p.m. Sunday. Festival-goers may walk the new Beall Family Rose Garden and the gardens' other areas. More than 4,000 perennials, annuals, shrubs, herbs, trees, vegetables, ornamental grasses and tropical plants are planted in the gardens.
Workshops (see accompanying list) will cover topics from shade gardens to banana growing to heirloom vegetables to Japanese maples to garden photography. Several focus on water conservation. One workshop will show attendees how to make and use a rain barrel; another will discuss water-thrifty plants.
The festival's featured speaker is Ijams naturalist Lyn Bales. He'll talk about his book, "Natural Histories: Stories from the Tennessee Valley," on both days.
Children and their families can visit an "insect zoo" and butterfly house. The gardens' sprinklers will be turned on for children to play on the half hour.
Music includes Saturday performances by Wild Blue Yonder at 11 a.m., Four Leaf Peat at 1 p.m. and the Knoxville Area Dulcimer Club at 3. The Early Morning String Dusters play at 12:30 p.m. Sunday, the Hector Qirko Band at 3.
Amy McRary may be reached at 865-342-6437.
© 2009, Knoxville News Sentinel
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