The 29th Annual Spring Herb Festival takes place May 4, 5, and 6 at the WNC Farmers Market in Asheville.

Herbs at the Festival — something for everybody.

More than 60 herb growers and vendors of herbal products will join forces May 4, 5, and 6, when the WNC Herb Marketing Association presents Asheville’s 29th Annual Spring Herb Festival at the WNC Farmers Market. The festival—the largest in the U.S. and Canada, welcoming over 35,000 buyers from around the area and across the South—is free and open to the public. Hours are Friday & Saturday 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m., and Sunday 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.

“We’ve been holding the Herb Festival for almost 30 years,” said Festival founder Rick Morgan, now retired and living in Virginia. “The first one, in 1990, was up in the parking lot by the Farmers Market office; six or eight growers, mostly from Madison County, set up tables for about four hours on a Saturday afternoon. And now it’s grown into the largest festival of its kind anywhere.”

Morgan handed over the reins after 20 years at the helm; since then the Festival has been managed by A.D. Reed, who directs the WNC Herb Marketing Association. “It’s a great event,” he said. “People come from all over to buy their plants and extracts and soaps. We see license plates from Maryland, Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia … even Alabama and Florida. Recently I got a call from a lady in New Jersey to confirm the dates so she could make sure not to miss it. People want the best, and they’re eager to come here to buy what they need.”

He notes that many attendees stay for several days to visit the mountains, Asheville’s attractions, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and area activities. “It’s great for tourism as well as for our local businesses.”

Why Herbs?

Herbs have been used for cooking and good health for millennia, along with the vegetables, roots, leafy greens, and other plants, both wild and cultivated, that grow in everyday gardens and even suburban yards. It’s now widely acknowledged that natural products derived from herbs, and often the herbs themselves, are invaluable in good cooking and good health. And it’s not just parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme!

Native Americans have traditionally used the roots of certain varieties of iris for healing, just as ancient Egyptians knew that the bark of the willow tree (containing salicylic acid, the active ingredient of aspirin) was ideal for treating aches and pains. Some varieties of common mustard (Brassica spp.) grow wild in open fields and are delicious additions to meals; and familiar mullein (Verbascum spp.), whose huge, fuzzy leaves and tall, spiky flowers dot the slopes along Interstate highways, can be dried and used to brew a healing tea for respiratory congestion, or turned into an oil to treat earaches.

Experts can make a healing salve from pine tree resin to help heal a cut, and brew herbal teas for a calming sleep or cold treatment. They know which herbs to add to perfect a family casserole or for feeding a multitude. And they know they can buy what they need at the Spring Herb Festival the first weekend in May.

Other factors help the industry grow

Expertise in herbs has been maintained and revived as area farmers and herbalists have ensured that traditional medicinal and culinary herbs are still available to area residents. Especially with the demise of burley tobacco in the mountains, many farms became available for younger generations of farmers to repurpose for herbs and vegetables.

Also, several other factors helped the regional herb industry grow in a truly organic way: the “buy local” movement with its preference for fresh foods; the steady growth of the restaurant, baking, and brewing scenes in Asheville and surrounding countries, all of which rely on area-grown herbs for flavoring and preparation; increased interest in non-GMO, heirloom, and organic products; and a preference for holistic, natural healing in place of high-tech medications and invasive treatments.

Garden vegetables, too

Along with hundreds of varieties of delicious, flavorful herbs, many growers at the Herb Festival offer herb-friendly vegetables for home gardeners. Visitors stock up on heirloom tomatoes, eggplants, and other favorites; non-GMO seeds and starter plants; and the extracts and essential oils, soaps, salves, and other products that are so valuable to maintaining health and well-being. The Festival also features a few products that are not specifically herb-related, but are essential to gardens: worm-casting compost and other natural fertilizers, and insect-eating native carnivorous plants to help home gardeners avoid using chemical pesticides.

Free workshops & classes

This year the Herb Festival will feature nine one-hour workshops and programs, presented by experts in herbology, gardening, or herb lore. Friday will see Edible Landscaping (11 a.m.), a First Aid Garden (1 p.m.), and Container Herb Gardening (3 p.m.); on Saturday, Preparing Herbs for Extracts (11 a.m.), Soapmaking (1 p.m.), and Blending Teas (3 p.m.); and on Sunday a Native Plants seminar (11 a.m.). As always at the Festival, all events, including workshops and presentations—as well as parking and admission—are free.

For more information about the Asheville Spring Herb Festival, call 828-301-8968 or visit www.ashevilleherbestival.org