First Published in Smoky Mountain News July15, 2026

The Joyful Botanist: Goodbye Cullowhee

In 1984 Ronald Reagan was the US President, Mary Lou Retton won gold at the Olympics, I was 13 years old and hated yardwork, and the number one pop song of the year was Prince’s “When Doves Cry.” This was also the year that the Cullowhee Native Plant Conference was born.

42 years ago, the native plant movement was begun by visionary founders who saw a need to bring together a diverse group of people to celebrate plants that are native to the Southeastern US, and to promote their use in landscaping and horticulture. Where most academic and professional conferences are very specific to one field of study, or a single component of industry or business, the Cullowhee Native Plant Conference, or just “Cullowhee” as attendees affectionally call it, brings in people who love native plants.

Cullowhee is attended by landscape architects and designers, commercial nursery operators and workers, garden club members, botanists, horticulturists, land managers, university professors and researchers, native plant society members, botanical garden and arboretum volunteers and workers and directors, home gardeners with no formal training, educators, herbalists, and just about anyone who has a shared interest in plants that have evolved in the Southeastern US.

It is this mixture of people from divergent backgrounds, and the resulting cross pollination (pun fully intended) of ideas and information that makes this event unlike any other of its kind. We gather and celebrate summer in the Southern Appalachian Mountains with people from all over the Southeastern US, including Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and beyond.

For the past 42 years we get together in July and share a week of lectures, workshops, field trips, and social gatherings. Each year’s conference is attended by a mixture of returning participants and first-time attendees. Many people come each year, planning their summers around it. This year will be the 21st anniversary of my first time attending Cullowhee. I’ll never forget that year or the first lecture I attended. I had no idea what they were talking about and felt that I had been allowed to attend by accident.

I also had no idea that Cullowhee would help to guide and inspire my life so deeply, such that most everything that I do for a living these days is basically me replicating the Cullowhee Conference year-round. I lead walks (field trips), give lectures, teach classes and workshops around native plant horticulture for a living. And I owe it all to Cullowhee and the friends and connections that I have made there over the years.

This summer will be the last time that Cullowhee will be held in Cullowhee, NC. To maintain the culture and impact of the conference, it has been decided to find a new home and start a brand-new conference under a brand-new name. As a member of the steering committee for this transition, we are inspired and dedicated to keep up the good work of Cullowhee, and to help nurture and create an annual event that will continue to inspire and connect people and native plants 42 years, and more.

So, dream if you can, a conference. An ocean of violets in bloom. And while the culture of Cullowhee and its impact and inspiration to the world around us will continue and live on in the creation of a new annual event to celebrate native plants, that new event will have a new name and location. So, this will be the last year of the Cullowhee Native Plant Conference. And this is what it sounds like, when the plant nerds cry.

The Joyful Botanist leads weekly wildflower walks most Fridays and offers consultations

and private group tours through Bigelow’s Botanical Excursions. bigelownc@gmail.com