On the last Sunday of October, the gravel and concrete around a historic airplane hangar in Columbia's Rosewood neighborhood will fill with a different kind of cargo: flats of native azaleas, trays of grasses, pots of violets and shrubs, hauled in by growers from across South Carolina. The Midlands Chapter of the South Carolina Native Plant Society holds its Fall Native Plant Market at Hunter-Gatherer Brewery at the Hangar, 1402 Jim Hamilton Blvd., on October 25, 2026. The event is free to walk into, with no tickets and no reserved seating, and the chapter's advice to shoppers is simple and repeated every year: bring a wagon.
The market gathers a handful of South Carolina growers under one roof, or rather under one very large historic roof. Shoppers can browse a selection of native plants from the growers on hand, plus two member growers from the chapter itself. All Good Books will be on hand with native plant books to help shoppers learn more about gardening for wildlife, and shoppers can talk with chapter members about what the organization is doing in the Midlands. T-shirts and hats will be for sale to support that work.
The timing is not arbitrary. As the chapter puts it, fall is the perfect season for planting perennials, grasses, and especially trees and shrubs. The market is built around that idea: that a yard, a median, a church garden or a school courtyard can become a small piece of functioning habitat, and that it does not take a full landscape overhaul to start. A few blooming perennials, the chapter argues, is a wonderful way to begin.
The setting carries its own history. The building at the corner of Jim Hamilton Boulevard and Airport Boulevard is the Curtiss-Wright Hangar, built in 1929 by the Curtiss-Wright Flying Service as the first structure at Owens Field, a municipal airport that then sat about three miles south of the city limits. The airport was named for Mayor Lawrence B. Owens and was dedicated in 1930 with an airshow that drew 15,000 spectators. Regularly scheduled flights began in 1932, civilian flight training in 1939, and observation flights by the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1940, with military training continuing through World War II and beyond. The city transferred the airport to Richland County in 1962, and the hangar was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. A state historical marker went up in 2012.
For decades the hangar sat in the shadow of that aviation history. Hunter-Gatherer Brewery moved in and opened the Hangar location, giving the old Curtiss-Wright building a second life as a brewpub with handcrafted pizzas, salads and appetizers alongside its taps. The brewery itself is older than the hangar location by more than two decades. Founder and brewmaster Kevin Varner opened Hunter-Gatherer at 900 Main St., just south of the State House, in 1995, making it Columbia's first microbrewery and the oldest locally owned brewery in the city. Varner learned the craft in Seattle at Hale's Ales, one of the country's oldest microbreweries, and he has brewed every batch the brewery has produced since opening. The Main Street ale house poured its last beers in December 2024 after nearly thirty years, when the University of South Carolina Development Foundation bought the property; the Hangar location carried on.
So the market lands in a building that has already been an airfield gateway, a flight-training school and a neighborhood brewpub, now briefly a plant nursery. That kind of reuse is something of a theme for the chapter. The South Carolina Native Plant Society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit devoted to the preservation and restoration of plants native to South Carolina, and its work runs through regional chapters across the state. The Midlands Chapter describes itself as a growing community of gardeners, naturalists, educators and neighbors, and its calendar mixes the practical with the exploratory: invasive plant removal, plant rescues ahead of development, new garden installations, and field trips to places like Congaree Bluffs, where members have hunted for May white azaleas with Dr. Charles Horn, and the Sandstone Barrens along the Fort Jackson Passage of the Palmetto Trail. Members meet at 7 p.m. on the second Thursday of odd months at the Garden Club Council of Greater Columbia building on Park Circle, and the public is always welcome.
The society itself dates to 1996, when word went out that South Carolina finally had its own native plant society. Jason L. Flynn recalled hearing the news at 18 and thinking, in his words, "Huh???" He had grown up a nature lover but, like many people, did not yet understand native plants and their part in the larger scheme of things. He had assumed native plant societies belonged to states out west, or to somewhere as remote as the Amazon. That arc, from a puzzling news item to a statewide institution with chapters from the Upstate to the Grand Strand, is roughly the arc the fall market is trying to extend to backyard gardeners one flat of perennials at a time.
The market's pitch is deliberately unpretentious. Shoppers are encouraged to share the announcement with friends, family, co-workers, anyone, on the theory that the more people growing native plants in yards, neighborhoods, parks, medians, businesses, churches and schools, the more biodiversity is supported and saved in South Carolina. The chapter frames the event as part shopping trip, part conversation and part afternoon out: browse the growers' tables, pick up a book, then stay awhile for food and a local craft brew in the hangar.
Details are straightforward. The Midlands Fall Native Plant Market runs at Hunter-Gatherer Brewery at the Hangar, 1402 Jim Hamilton Blvd., Columbia, SC 29205, on October 25, 2026. Admission is open to the public, and the chapter's one piece of equipment advice bears repeating: bring your wagon.