The ginseng habitat garden is *usually* open by appointment beginning in May. However in 2019, the garden is closed during the month of May.
I will have limited amounts of seedlings to sell this year, and you can make an appointment to come see the garden during another month, just not during May. The nursery and ginseng habitat garden will be back to normal functioning after the month of May 2019.
Ginseng usually unfurls from mid-to-late April here. By that time, it’s possible none of the early flowers of bloodroot, rue anemone, or goldenseal and blue cohosh will be blooming. Those bloom very early, so if you want to see these members of a healthy ginseng habitat, you should plan to come in early April. Sometimes they bloom as early as mid-March. I’ll try to post photos to let you know when it starts this year.
Ginseng Nursery 2019 Hours & Info
Will update this as soon as I have started to see signs of life in the habitat. Check back in late March.
Planning a Visit
If you’d like to visit the ginseng habitat garden, contact me by filling out the form. It’s free to visit and I have seedlings for sale but no purchase is required. An appointment is necessary to make sure I’m home when you want to visit. All visitors are required to fill out a liability waiver, which will be sent to you along with the address and phone number when the appointment is arranged.
Ginseng Seedlings
This year will not be shipping potted seedlings. I will allow some ‘u-dig’ for first year seedlings and may be able to get a few potted up with advance notice. But 2019 is not going to operate by the usual schedule because the month of May is a problem this year due to personal schedule conflicts. 
Early April
The first week of April is ordinarily too early for the ginseng to unfurl, but there are companion plants making a show already. Here’s a tour of the Ginseng Habitat Garden 2018 flowers on April 6. Note: The Wild Ozark Ginseng Habitat Garden will NOT be open to visitors this year in May. Right now the weather is so unpredictable that it’s hard to schedule visits, but if you want to see it during April, or after the start of June, just use the form above. Rue anemone and bloodroot are among the first flowers to bloom in the habitat. Prints are available of these photos, but I don’t have them listed in the shop yet. Email me if interested. 
On the driveway side of the creek I had a few pots of various plants. I’d forgotten to label them before the top growth died back, so I was unsure of what was there. This morning I saw that a few of them had started unfurling. Bloodroot, goldenseal, and wild hydrangea were among them. Those need to be in more shade, so I moved them across the creek into the habitat.
Once on the other side of the creek, I did a bit of looking around to see what else might be waking up. I had divided some black cohosh last year and potted some of them. The ones in pots were coming up, but no signs yet of the ones in the ground.
In one of the other pots, I found the Giant Solomon’s Seal coming up. I’ve had a very difficult time transplanting this to the habitat garden, so I am hoping that by growing it in the pots over the past year that it will be happier once I move it to the ground. 
Looking for Virginia snakeroot
Found something interesting while heading up the trail to see if the Virginia snakeroot was up. This poor little mouse met an untimely end, probably early this morning. Since the only thing eaten was its head, I assume it encountered a mink or weasel. They tend to enjoy things like that. A fox or other critter will find the leftovers later and probably make good use of it to feed kits. At Wild Ozark we have a healthy balance between predators and prey animals. It does mean that some things die so that others can live, but isn’t that true of all life? We only protect our chickens and household from predators. All wildlife is free to live as it would naturally on the rest of our acreage. Except some of the deer encounter my husband, the predator who likes to kill a few deer each year.
After inspecting the mouse, I looked for the snakeroot, but didn’t see any. The reindeer moss has been growing, though. 
It seems like reindeer moss grows best in open areas, so I’m not sure how much longer it’ll do well where it is now. I’ve never tried transplanting it, and don’t really have a location similar to the spots I’ve seen it growing abundantly. Mayapple is fairly adaptive as long as there is some shade, so it grows in more than just ginseng habitats. But it’s a frequent companion plant, too. 
The Ginseng Habitat Garden was logged thin about twenty years ago. It’s still not an ideal habitat site for ginseng, but each year brings it closer to the balance it once had. This year, for the first time, I found trillium growing naturally there. 
I’ve transplanted a lot of plants to the habitat, but this was not one of them. So it pleases me to see it. It means that the habitat is becoming more friendly to the plants that like deep shade and loamy soil. These two characteristics are critical and the habitat still has a long ways to go before it gains the soil texture it needs. But I am seeing progress!