Southern Garden Tour sets 2025 dates for trial garden open houses

The Southern Garden Tour is back this June, inviting members of the horticulture industry to explore trial gardens across three Southern states hosted by Young’s Plant Farm, the University of Georgia Trial Gardens and Metrolina Greenhouses.

The dates are:

• June 3: Young’s Plant Farm, Auburn, Alabama. The Industry Open House is 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• June 4: University of Georgia Trial Gardens, Athens, Georgia. The Industry Open House is in the morning, but the gardens will remain open all day, and industry members are welcome to return throughout the summer.
• June 5: Metrolina Greenhouses, Huntersville, North Carolina. The Industry Open House starts at 8 a.m., lunch is at noon and the garden is open until 2 p.m.

The Southern Garden Tour is a self-guided event designed for growers, breeders, brokers, educators, landscapers and allied trade members of the horticulture industry. It offers an immersive look at real-world garden trials highlighting the performance of the latest plant genetics.

The newly updated southerngardentour.com serves as the tour’s central hub, providing site-specific details, registration access, hotel and dining recommendations and exclusive content.

New for 2025, the website features top-performing 2024 plant varieties, photos and curated industry trade media coverage from each location.

Additional highlights include Metrolina Greenhouses’ invitation-only consumer event for Home Garden Panel members, where approximately 125 consumers will participate in focus groups, and more than 500 consumers will explore the 3-acre trial garden and flag their favorite varieties. The annual event gathers qualitative consumer insights that are followed up with quantitative research. HGP members receive confidential consumer preference data and focus group reports, providing valuable end-user feedback on new plant genetics and product concepts.

New at Young’s Plant Farm this year, the trial garden is partnering with Food U, a program at Auburn University that provides sustainable, student-grown food for on-site consumption. In collaboration with Food U, the Young’s Plant Farm Trial Garden will feature herbs, vegetables and edible flowering annuals throughout the trial garden, and Auburn University’s Food U Coordinator Jack Maruna will be onsite to answer questions. Guests of the trial garden will also be able to arrange for a tour of the rooftop garden at the nearby Laurel Hotel, which provides produce for 1856 Culinary Residence, a teaching restaurant on the Auburn University campus.

For full event details at all the trial sites and to register, visit southerngardentour.com.