In 1984, Ronald Reagan was the President, Mary Lou Retton won gold at the Olympics, I was a 13 year old who 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.
Forty-two years ago, visionary founders who saw a need to bring together a diverse group of people to celebrate plants native to the Southeast began the native plant movement. They aimed to promote those plants’ use in landscaping and horticulture. Where most academic and professional conferences are specific to one field of study, a component of industry or a 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, workers and directors; home gardeners with no formal training; educators; herbalists; and just about anyone who has an interest in plants that have evolved in the Southeast.
It is this mixture of people from diverse backgrounds and the resulting cross pollination (pun fully intended) of ideas and information that makes this event unlike any other. We gather and celebrate summer in the Southern Appalachian Mountains with people from all over the Southeast.
For the past 42 years, we have gotten 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 heard. I had no idea what they were talking about and felt that I had been allowed in by accident.
I also had no idea that Cullowhee would help guide and inspire my life so deeply, such that most everything that I do year-round for a living these days replicates the Cullowhee Conference. I lead walks (field trips), give lectures and teach classes and workshops around native plant horticulture, 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 its namesake town. To maintain the culture and impact of the conference, it will 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, to help nurture and create an annual event that will continue to inspire and connect people and native plants for another 42 years or 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. This will be the last year of the Cullowhee Native Plant Conference.
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.)