OAK RIDGE, TN – The University of Tennessee Arboretum Society is holding its 50th annual Spring Plant Sale on Saturday, April 16. Four of the best local nurseries will gather in one location to offer a large and varied selection of shrubs, trees, wildflowers, perennials, annuals and edibles; Beaver Creek and Riverdale Nurseries from Knoxville, Sunlight Gardens from Andersonville and East Fork Nursery from Sevierville. Brad Greenwood Designs will have unique botanically themed copper garden ornaments and steel features for the home and yard. Dano’s Hot Dogs, with an expanded menu, will again be at the event.

Back by popular demand, the Society will be offering ‘The Rising Sun™’ Redbud. This new Redbud displays brilliant, golden tangerine and lime-colored, heart-shaped foliage all summer and was a quick sell-out plant last year. The Society will also be offering a limited supply of another new redbud tree: ‘Alley Cat’. ‘Alley Cat’ was literally discovered in an alley in Kentucky and has beautiful green and white variegated foliage which is stable and scorch resistant.

Retired UT horticulture professor Will Witte, the “Answer Man”, will be on hand to answer your plant questions and will be selling books from his personal horticulture library.

The sale will be from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the UT Arboretum at 901 S. Illinois Ave (Hwy. 62) in Oak Ridge. The “Members Only” sale will be on Friday evening, April 15th from 5-7 p.m. Memberships may be purchased at that time for this “early bird” shopping opportunity. Checks and credit cards will be accepted.

Proceeds from this sale and other Society fund-raising events go toward the operating expenses and endowment fund for the UT Arboretum. To learn more about the Arboretum Society, and the UT Arboretum Endowment Fund, visit utarboretumsociety.org.