The Annual Azalea Celebration

Each year, NC Beautiful, the Capitol Broadcasting Company, and WRAL-TV5 partner together to make thousands of azalea plants available to non-profit organizations who wish to beautify their grounds. The azaleas are propagated from the WRAL gardens, a project of the late A.J. Fletcher, a founder of WRAL. 2010 marked the 25th Anniversary of the Azalea Celebration. To date, we’ve awarded close to 250,000 plants to over 3,000 non-profit organizations statewide. Last year, NC Beautiful distributed over 5,000 azaleas to 120 non-profits. It shows what a community-based landscaping project can accomplish. Azaleas from the Celebration now enhance the beauty of hundreds of acres on the grounds of schools, churches, parks, greenways, public rights-of-way, and community and senior centers across North Carolina.

Organizations participating in the Azalea Celebration can enjoy even more than the sea of colors from their azaleas. Through the AJ Fletcher Award, cash incentives are offered to groups who keep their azaleas healthy and sustain their projects over a three year period. This helps sustain the original landscape project so it can be enjoyed by us all for years to come. Recent winners of the Fletcher award include a garden club that maintains a fragrance garden for a school for the blind, a church whose congregation lugged water to keep their azaleas alive through a drought, and a first grade class that created the first landscaping at its school. The winners were each given up to $500 and additional azaleas.

Azalea Celebration Application -The 2017 Application is here! It must be postmarked by Aug 28, 2017 – this has been extended to Sept 5.  Azaleas will be distributed on Sat., Sept. 30, 2017. Click 32nd Azalea Celebration Application  to upload the form and print it. After completing the form, please mail to Azalea Celebration, PO Box 12800, Raleigh, NC 27605