The Apopka Art and Foliage Festival: 64 Years of Art, Ferns and Kit Land Nelson Park
Two festivals merged in 1976 into the city's signature spring weekend — plus the 1859 Lodge, the Museum of the Apopkans and a heritage itinerary around the park.
3 minute read
One weekend each spring, Apopka’s two identities — the art town and the foliage town — share a single park, and have done for more than six decades. The Apopka Art and Foliage Festival, held annually at Kit Land Nelson Park and presented by the GFWC Apopka Woman’s Club in partnership with the City of Apopka, reached its 64th edition in 2026. It is the signature event of our Apopka hub: juried fine art and craft, displays and sales from Central Florida foliage growers, live entertainment, food, and a park full of the city showing itself to itself. Proceeds return to the community as scholarships and support for local nonprofits and city departments.
Two festivals that became one
The festival’s own history page tells a tidy origin story. In 1961, under president Kit Land-Nelson, the Apopka Woman’s Club hosted its first art show at Apopka Memorial High School, and the show became annual. In 1965 the Apopka Jaycees staged the first Foliage Festival at Forest Avenue and 4th Street. In 1976 the two events merged into the Apopka Art and Foliage Festival, and the combined festival settled at the park that now carries its founding president’s name. Milestones followed: designation as a National Local Legacy by the Library of Congress in 2000, a 50th anniversary in 2011, and a 60th in 2022 after the pandemic cancellation. Few Central Florida community events can show a paper trail that long — the city council still proclaims Art and Foliage Festival Weekend by name each spring.
The park that hosts it: Kit Land Nelson
Kit Land Nelson Park, at 10 North Forest Avenue, is downtown Apopka’s front lawn the other 51 weekends too: playgrounds for different ages and abilities, a large gazebo and picnic tables, and a free splash pad that anchors summer for local families. The city also stages its annual tree lighting with a holiday market in the park each December, so the festival’s home is genuinely the city’s living room rather than a rented fairground. Festival weekend fills it edge to edge — art booths under the trees, foliage displays doing the city’s industrial show-and-tell, and the growers’ tables the one reliable place all year to buy Apopka foliage directly from Apopka growers, as our foliage capital history explains.
Build a heritage weekend around it
The festival pairs naturally with the small, dense heritage core around it. The Museum of the Apopkans, at 122 East Fifth Street, is run by the Apopka Historical Society — formed in 1968, incorporated in 1971 — with exhibits on Apopka and northwest Orange County pioneers; its regular pattern is midday-to-afternoon Wednesday through Friday and Saturday mornings, so a festival Saturday can include it. A few blocks away at Main Street and Alabama Avenue stands the Lodge, built in 1859, described as the oldest Masonic meeting hall in continuous use in Florida — the building the settlement itself was first named for, before incorporation in 1882 measured the city one mile in every direction from it. Coffee before, at Canon or Propagate from our downtown guide; dinner after, from the where-to-eat roundup.
Practical notes
The festival is a free, two-day spring weekend — recent editions have run in late April, with the 2025 weekend proclaimed for April 26–27 and the 64th held in 2026; confirm the current year’s dates on the festival’s official site before traveling, since the calendar shifts. Arrive early for parking around the downtown blocks, bring a way to carry plants home, and treat the foliage hall as the main event rather than the sideshow: this is the Indoor Foliage Capital’s home show. Out-of-towners can place the park on the Orlando Top Spots Map and pair the trip with a spring morning at Wekiwa Springs — art, foliage and 72-degree water inside one Apopka weekend.
Photo: DrPMO, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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