North Carolina Azalea Festival — Local services in Wilmington

I bought tickets for the Azalea Festival Garden Tour. They were $35 a piece, and they were self led driving and foot tours through mostly residential gardens. At first I was extremely disappointed because a few of the gardens were very small and I could've seen everything from the road, but then two things happened to change my opinion.

I visited Airlie Gardens, which is included with the price of the ticket. It was absolutely gorgeous in the springtime, and well worth the price of the ticket on its own with how large it was. The normal price of a ticket to Airlie Gardens; however, is $7 so I was still a little disappointed in the value of the garden tour ticket.

Then I went to two educational sessions on the garden tour. One was a retired UNCW professor talking about how to make spaces for wildlife in residential areas. Another was about the installation of a self-regulating natural swimming pool and wildlife habitat. These educational sessions were very informative and well worth the price of the ticket to me. Apparently 2022 was the first year the Azalea festival had these educational sessions too!!! I hope they continue them. They made the garden tour worthwhile.

If this sort of thing wouldn't appeal to you, definitely skip the garden tour and find some of the free events of the Azalea festival. It's not all nature. There are concerts, events at local restaurants, and other events like coin shows and boxing...

This festival seems to increase in poor management and planning every year. Last year I thought they had hit the max for lack of organization, yet here we are. Last year business managers/owners were asked to sign a permission slip of sorts for tents to be placed out front of their businesses. They were mislead into thinking that there would be walkways between tents and the business itself would still be visible from the street only to find out later that these regulated “walkways” were only 12” and completely denied not only visibility of the business but accessibility to the business from the street as well. This year employees of the same businesses were given parking passes that were supposed to allow them to get through the barricades and report to work. This would have made their lives slightly easier. However, it doesn’t work if the people manning these barricades “were never told anything about passes”. All of these issues could easily be fixed with honest and efficient management. Understand that this festival brings a lot of business to downtown for the weekend, but come on guys. It does ya no good when we can’t...

This festival used to be great. Over the years it’s become increasingly disappointing. There are so many vendors selling the same made in Mexico/China items. There are some great local artists and bands. Which is why I gave it 2 stars. The Main stage is absolutely terrible. The tickets are over priced for a mediocre venue. The location on the river is beautiful. However, the planning is awful. There are no places to sit. You’re standing in a parking lot on a steep slope. The wait in between sets is well over 30 minutes. By the time the main act came on stage the crowd was completely wasted and restless. Which causes fights to break out. There was no event security. They only had police officers standing by. The officers had no clue how to handle the crowd. I watched bystanders intervene to stop a fight while officers stood by looking confused. I’ve been to many concerts and this is the first that did not have an experienced event security team. We ended up leaving the concert early to go watch some local bands play....