Volunteers Always Welcome - contact us!
APril 2026
Award Recipients and Projects
Beginning 2013 to 2024
- Swannanoa Valley Museum - garden in front for educational experience
- Julia Stout, a local artist - a garden at Town Hall (Julia is now deceased)
- Local book club - so they could plant milkweed
- 3rd Grade Elementary School Reading Class - created an outdoor reading area garden
- Primary School - landscaping around school
- Owen High School - environmental landscaping around campus
- Black Mountain Home for Children - drip irrigation system for vegetable gardens
- Own Middle School - plantings for an Appalachian Heritage Garden
- Black Mountain Elementary School - adding a recycled garden section in the current garden
- Adults and Students from Invisible Hands at Christ Community Church have plans to build a raised garden bed at Nana’s Place.
- Swannanoa Valley Museum and History Center - built a geological garden
- The Curiosity Shoppe, upgrade garden
- First Christian Church, install pollinator garden
- Kate Shawgo, install community meadow garden
- Lakeview Center at Lake Tomahawk, installing new landscape
- The Old Depot Association, installing east garden sites
- Black Mountain Center for the Arts, creating mosaic pots with flower power by entrance
- Black Mountain Home for Children, creating gardens by Thrift Store
- Black Mountain Library will plant and care for a rose garden
- Skipped 2021 due to COVID
- Donald S. Collins Early Learning Center, created a rock and ornamental fence and adding a new raised bed. Children that attend the Center will help with the planting and maintenance of the bed.
- The Unitarian Congregation, in partnership with Eagle Scouts, will install a Little Free Library/Pantry with a garden surrounding it in front of the church. The Congregation will also be replanting a garden on both sides of the church’s welcome sign.
- Black Mountain Center for the Arts, added colorful planters to the rear exterior of the building and also planting a small shade garden under the stairwell.
- Lakeview Center at Lake Tomahawk, revamp the large three-tiered planter adjacent to the center and facing Lake Tomahawk. The planter will contain mass plantings that will provide color and interest throughout the growing season.
- Black Mountain Neuro-Medical Treatment Center, they will build a new flower garden that can be easily accessible for their limited mobility residents. The project will include an elevated garden bed. (2023)
- The Open Oven Cafe will landscape the front of the restaurant with plants and flowers that will thrive in the shade. This project will include the garden space around the cafe sign, planter boxes, and trellises. (2023)
- The Black Mountain Primary School will replace broken down cinder block borders on the rock garden, the sensory garden and herb garden with solid timber borders. These beds are visible to the school personnel, parents, and students, as well as the general population. (2023)
- The SVCM Hope for Tomorrow project includes landscaping the slope between the apartments and Montreat Road. The area will be stabilized with ground cover, shrubs, and perennials. (2023)
- Bush Farmhouse will Replace shrubs at the front of the restaurant with Limelight Hydrangea.
- Red House Gallery To beautify the street back entrance to the studios, with the hope of providing an example and encouragement to other businesses in the parking area to join the effort to create a welcoming square. Work would include 2 arborvitae, 2 large planters, assorted perennials and annuals and an attractive fence.
- Black Mountain United Methodist Church To provide an attractive bed around the Church sign on State Street. The brick edging will be improved and filled with perennials and mulched.
- Health Ridge Pharmacy The well-established pharmacy on the corner of US 70 and Blue Ridge Road wants to clean up and create attractive flower beds in the front and side of their business. They would like to improve the soil in the beds and plant new evergreens and native perennial wildflowers.
- BM Presbyterian Church Earth Care Team 1. Landscape the west side of the church building, which faces Montreat Road. The plan will include native flowering perennials and shrubs, providing color and visual interest throughout the four season - 2. The project is aimed at erosion control and risk management. Restore the area which is used as a short cut between the White Horse parking area and the church parking area. The plan is to backfill the eroded area and match the existing retaining wall, along with installing a split-rail fence and attractive native plantings to discourage the continued use on the short cut.
- Sassafras on Sutton Transform the courtyard in front of their store on Cherry Street into a truly inviting place. The plan includes perennial flowering shrubs, a flowering “water fall” below the lion’s head and improve the flower boxes along Cherry street and remove the silk flowers and replace with blooming annuals.
- Sarah Sunshine Pottery Beautify the back of the shop where there a large deck recently built. This area is next to the Red House Gallery, which is also a Seed Money applicant, and this area could contribute to making this parking area a more attractive square and less industrial. Sarah requests two ceramic planters to grow plants in the the summer and two window box style planters along the edges of the porch.
- Girl Scouts 2498 The is a community service project for 20 girl scouts, where they will add plants and lots of color to the planter box in front of the BP station, near Ingles on Route 9. If they have the money, they will plant annuals at the post office. The goal is to learn how to make their community more beautiful and take pride in it.
- Black Mountain Presbyterian Church Earth Care Team. This is phase II of their 2024 Seed Money Project to create a native flower bed and a fence to prevent people from using the slope between the White Horse and the Church as a walkway to the sidewalk. This became a bare space with erosion and created harm to the roots of the old oak tree standing there. The church put up a lovely split rail fence around this corner and asked for Seed Money to provide funds for native evergreen flowering shrubs and a few perennials and markers to identify the plants in the bed.
- Acoustic Corner/White Horse Back Slope. Transform the hillside at the back of the White Horse Parking lot, next to the Acoustic Corner Music Shop, which is unsightly and covered with English Ivy, Kudzu and Chokeberry, to a beautiful pollinator garden with supplemental annuals for more color.
- Red House Gallery This is Phase II of their 2024 Seed Money Project. They will add additional perennials and annuals to their pocket garden at the back entrance to their Gallery. They will also add hanging baskets or tall pots with climbing plants outside the front of their gallery on Cherry Street. We are discouraging pots due to causing congestion on the sidewalks and conflicting with the Beautification containers all ready in place throughout the downtown.
- Goldfinch Cocktails and Kitchen and Speakeasy These new owners want to do so much to improve the landscape and ambiance to their two businesses, and Seed Money will provide money for Phase I of these projects. This award will help fund lattice replacements with wires for new healthy, climbing, nightshade vines on the fence along Cherry street, hanging baskets along the buildings on Cherry Street and refreshing all planting beds that are currently in place. We are discouraging pots placed on the sidewalks.
- Berliner Kindl Restaurant Theses are new owners very interested in improving the landscape around their restuarant. In this phase, they will add seasonal flowers to their pots in front of their restaurant. In additions, they will remove the old forsythia and tree in bed next to restaurant, amend the soil and replace with a lovely evergreen and some perennials.
- Black Mountain Primary School Create a garden area around the BM Primary Elementary School sign in front of the school on State Street. This would involve digging up the turf and restoring and amending the soil and then creating a lovely garden bed with low growing shrubs and perennials. We suggested that this would be Phase 1 of the landscape project for the school. They are also interested in improving the landscape in the entrance and exit areas to the school. We suggested that this could be Phase 2.