East Texas Horticultural Field Day

The East Texas Horticultural Field Day will feature more than 500 ornamental plant trial varieties for public viewing on July 22 at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Overton. 

The East Texas Horticultural Field Day will be open to the public on July 22. The open-house event features hundreds of ornamental plants being trialed at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Overton. (Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Adam Russell)

This year’s field day will allow in-person attendance from 8 a.m. to noon for a free, “open house-style” event, said Brent Pemberton, Ph.D., Texas A&M AgriLife Research ornamental horticulturist, Overton. COVID-19 protocols prevented attendance by the public last year.

“We’re excited to open the event back up to the public,” he said. “We missed the interaction with our fellow gardeners last year and the responses the plants get from people who show up for their first time or who have been making the field day an event they put on their calendar every year.”

Pemberton started the field day in 1993 to showcase the ornamental trials for commercial seed companies, local nursery managers and gardening enthusiasts.

The field day will begin at the center’s Bruce McMillan Jr. East Farm, 2 miles east of Overton on Texas Highway 135 N.

The ornamental trial garden is on County Road 133 just past the former Kilgore College Demonstration Farm.

There will be signs to guide visitors, Pemberton said.