The Vaseyi Chapter received its charter as a chapter at the 2001 Azalea Society Convention on June 14-17 in Asheville, North Carolina, and was the host of that convention. We chose our name in honor of Rhododendron vaseyi, native only to a few counties in western North Carolina. R. vaseyi was discovered in 1878 near Webster, North Carolina by George Vasey, the first director of the US National Herbarium (...more George Vasey info).

We draw our members from western North Carolina, northern South Carolina and eastern Tennessee. We meet at least 5 or 6 times a year, with programs on various aspects of native deciduous azaleas and evergreen azaleas, and we visit various gardens during late spring and early summer. You will find a hearty welcome from your fellow azalea lovers in the Vaseyi Chapter - door prizes every meeting, a free azalea for each new member!

April 25 - 2 :00 pm, Bullington Center: program TBD, work session for the May 8 ECO/ASA garden tours

Date	Time	What	Where
April 25	2:00 pm	program TBD, ECO/ASA Garden Tour planning	Bullington Center
May 8	10:00 am - 4:00 pm	ECO/ASA Azalea Garden Tour	four Hendersonville gardens
May 23		Field trip - carpool, details later	East Fork Nursery, Sevierville TN
June		Field trips - carpool, details later	western North Carolina balds
July		program TBD	field trip to see the 'Red Max' near Mt Mitchell(?)
August		no meeting
September 26	2:00 pm	Garden Design - Alison Arnold	Bullington Center
October 24	2:00 pm	Seed exchange, propagation discussion	Bullington Center
November	2:00 pm	Annual meeting, covered dish meal	Bullington Center

Meetings are held at the Bullington Horticultural Learning Center in Hendersonville NC, typically on the fourth Sunday of the month at 2:00 pm.

Directions from I-26:
- take exit 49A Bat Cave/Lake Lure onto 64E, go 0.7 miles to Howard Gap Road (next light past Wal-Mart exit)
- turn left (north) onto Howard Gap Road, go 0.9 miles to a fork in the road at Zeb Corn Road
- turn right onto Zeb Corn Road, go 0.5 mile to Upper Red Oak Trail (Bullington Center sign on the right)
- turn right onto Upper Red Oak Trail, turn left into the first driveway
The meeting room is in the house.

Chapter Project
We are researching the location and distribution of our namesake azalea R. vaseyi in the wild, and in historical and current documentation. One of these springs we hope to locate the type speciment of R. vaseyi, which the original herbarium sheet mentions as being found at the "Summit of a balsam mountain 7 miles south west from Webster Jackson Cty North Carolina". So far, we have located two likely peaks in the area. To participate in this project, please contact John Brown.

President	April Sanborn
Secretary	Suzanne Medd
Treasurer	Bob Stelloh
Past President	Doley Bell

March 28, 2010 - John Turner, Executive Director of the Southern Highlands Reserve, gave us an excellent overview of the Reserve, 120 acres atop Toxaway Mountain, devoted to the preservation of native Blue Ridge Mountain plants

June 16, 2007 - Joe/Donna Coleman garden, Lithonia GA, joint with Azalea Chapter ARS, where we met and took cuttings from Joe's very extensive collection of evergreen and deciduous azaleas.

February 8, 2004 - Dr. Clarence Towe gave an excellent program on native azaleas, with a focus on breeding unusual native azaleas. Clarence has extensive experience with native azaleas and is writing a book on them to be published by Timber Press in August 2004. He devised the "It's as simple as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5" mnemonic to help remember our species azaleas:

  - 1 - West coast azalea - occidentale (pictures)
  - 2 - Odd pinks - canadense, vaseyi
  - 3 - Fragrant pinks - canescens, periclymenoides, prinophyllum
  - 4 - Fragrant whites - alabamense, arborescens, atlanticum, viscosum
  - 5 - Orange reds - austrinum, calendulaceum, cumberlandense, flammeum, prunifolium

November 16, 2003 We held our annual election of officers, and had a big seed exchange - lots of deciduous and evergreen azalea seed, including wild-collected native azalea seed, and open-pollinated and hand-pollinated seed from member gardens and elsewhere - with a brief "how-to" discussion on raising azaleas from seed.

November 9, 2003. We had a well-attended joint meeting with the Southeastern Chapter-ARS at the Visitor Center of the North Carolina Arboretum. Don Hyatt gave an outstanding program on native azaleas, distributed native azalea seed, and gave native azalea seedlings to every attendee.

October 12, 2003. The chapter meeting topic was "Back to Basics", a free-ranging discussion of azalea culture. Guests included Karel Bernady and Jim Gears from the Philadelphia area, here on a native azalea seed-gathering expedition.

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