Would you like some afternoon tea with your garden seminar? Do you want to shop for paintings, jewelry, fabric art and more created by local artists or buy locally grown plants and get free gardening information? Perhaps you like to look at and hear about classic cars? And everyone always enjoys a raffle when the prizes include garden art, jewelry and gift certificates. You can do all this on Saturday, May 10, when the Wake Forest Garden Club hosts its annual spring event, the Mad Hatter’s Garden Party on the lawn and inside the Wake Forest Historical Museum on North Main Street. The event runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is free except for the afternoon tea and seminars. Go to www.wfgardenclub.org for more information.

Superintendent of Public Schools Dr. June Atkinson will be the featured speaker at the first Education Summit sponsored by the Wake Forest Area Chamber of Commerce. The summit will be held Tuesday, April 8, from 8 to 10 a.m. at CenturyLink. Other speakers will be Wake County School Board Member Tom Benton, local teacher Laura Hartman and a representative from 3 Phoenix, a local engineering/communications firm. The event is free to chamber members and non-members, but you are asked to register online at http://chambermaster.wakeforestchamber.org/Events/details/education-summit-3656. CenturyLink is a secure facility. Please park in the back and check in. The purpose of the summit is to provide information about local and state education initiatives. Atkinson is the first woman elected State Superintendent of the Public Schools of North Carolina and has served in this position since August 2005. As State Superintendent, Dr. Atkinson oversees almost 1.5 million students in over 2,500 public

The fourth Health & Wellness Expo sponsored by the Wake Weekly family of community newspapers will be held from 1 to 7 p.m. at the Factory on Thursday, April 10, at The Factory, 1839 South Main Street in Wake Forest. The free event features 50-plus area business catering to family wellness, including physical therapy, eye care, chiropractors, massage therapy and senior care, among others. The Rex Mammogram bus will be there to screen pre-qualified women from 10:30 a.m to 2:30 p.m. Meet the doctors, win items through raffles and watch demonstrations, plus sample food from area restaurants. For more information, visit wakeweekly.com.

Dr. Michael L. Walden will be the speaker Wednesday, April 16, when the Wake Forest Area Chamber of Commerce hosts its annual Economic Development Forum at Wake Forest Presbyterian Church. The forum, which runs from 8 to 9:30 a.m. is sponsored by Wake Electric and ElectriCities. Tickets are $20 for chamber members and nonmembers. Register at www.wakeforestchamber.org. Breakfast will be provided by The Olde English Tea Room. The chamber presents the forum to inform Wake Forest area residents about the latest data and forecasts for the local economy. Walden is a William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor and Extension Economist in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State University. Dr. Walden has teaching, research, and extension responsibilities at NCSU in the areas of consumer economics, economic outlook, and public policy.  He has published eight books and over 250 articles and reports. He has served on several local and

Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius) is a medium sized arching shrub with long fine stems and tiny, almost unnoticeable leaves. It is a bright medium green both summer and winter and looks very much like a grass as it flows out of the shrub border.  It is nothing like a grass when it blooms, however. Half-inch pea-like flowers totally cover the stems in colors ranging from bright yellow to deep burgundy. Flowers persist for about a month and as they age they change colors, giving a slowly shifting display over time. Scotch Broom is native to the British Isles and temperate Europe. It was reportedly worn as an emblem by Geoffrey of Anjou, the founder of the Plantagenet line of kings in England. The name Plantagenet itself it derived from a medieval name for the plant. It was introduced to Virginia in the early 1800s and to California around 1850. It

Northern Wake Relay For Life team captains will meet Thursday, April 3, and Tuesday, April 15, at 7:30 p.m. at St. John’s Episcopal Church, 830 Durham Road. The public is invited to join the fight against cancer and learn more about the American Cancer Society’s efforts to find cures while supporting cancer survivors. Runners of all ages are invited to lace up and party down at the first Marga-Relay-Ville 5k on Saturday, May 17, at Heritage High School in Wake Forest. The charity run is in conjunction with the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life that weekend at the school. Registration for the timed 5k is a $25 donation to the fight against cancer. Sign up at www.NorthernWakeRelay.org and look for Relay 5k, or contact Melissa Kobelinski at melissa.kobelinski@cancer.org or 919-334-5228. Wheelchairs, wagons, strollers and walkers are also invited to take part (but no pets or bicycles). Vendor booths are available for $25 and commemorative race shirts

One of Wake Forest’s favorite events, HerbFest will return to Festival Park at 525 South White Street for two consecutive weekends, April 19 through 21 and April 26 through 28. There will be organic herbs, heritage tomatoes, heirloom vegetable plants and locally grown perennials for sale along with live entertainment and fun activities for everyone.  

Saturday, April 5, the Wake Forest Farmers Market in the parking lot behind CVS will return to its regular spring/summer/fall hours, 8 a.m. to noon, with good weather, more vendors and lots of events in sight. The first event will be Saturday, April 12, when award-winning food writer Debbie Moose will be at the market and bringing samples of her best tasting deviled eggs just in time for Easter. You will find her from 9:30 a.m. to noon in one of the booths. With the better weather expect to find more produce, even hot house tomatoes and cucumbers very soon. Shoppers will also find a wide variety of meats – beef, chicken, lamb, goat and duck – as well as eggs, honey, baked goods both regular and gluten-free, herbs, coffee, knit goods, jewelry, garden art and hand-carved and manufactured wood furniture and utensils. The market is open every Saturday in

The new expanded Meet in the Street festival planned for Saturday, May 3, now stretches along three downtown streets, and that means more people are needed to man different posts and keep the fun going all day long. Meet in the Street is sponsored by the Wake Forest Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Wake Forest is expected to draw at least 15,000 people to shop, enjoy the music and fun from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Volunteers are needed on two-hour shifts from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m., and there are also opportunities to volunteer on Friday, May 2, for the early preparations. To volunteer, please contact Deborah Gonzales at wfmeetinthestreet@gmail.com later than Wednesday, April 9. There will be training for the volunteers in late April. On the Saturday, visitors and town residents will find food trucks, the Carolina Hurricanes Storm Squad with Stormy, a children’s carnival, a beer garden,

If you like yard sales and swap meets, plan now to shop or sell at the Wake Forest Bazaar when it opens for the first time on Saturday, May 10, at Festival Park on South White Street. The hours will be 8 a.m. to noon, and plans are to hold it every second and fourth Saturday through the summer. Beth Jarvah with The Cotton Company laid out the format and rules recently. “Anyone can rent a booth space and sell whatever they want. Crafters, antiques, yard sale – anything. “There will be an onsite staff member on hand to sell walk-in spaces and to rent tables. The basic fee is just an empty plot in the field and you bring your own everything, tables chairs, etc., unless you want to rent them from us.   “All sales are to be handled by the individual seller in a yard-sale type of set