Flowertown Festival 2027: Dates, Hours, Parking, History

The Flowertown Festival 2027 is scheduled for Friday, April 2 through Sunday, April 4, 2027, in Azalea Park and along South Main Street in downtown Summerville, South Carolina. The Charleston visitors bureau lists those dates as the festival’s 54th anniversary. Hours in recent years have been 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free. The 2026 festival ran March 27–29, so the festival moves between the last weekend of March and the first weekend of April depending on the calendar and, as the organizers put it, on when the azaleas peak.

It is run by the Summerville Family YMCA as its largest fundraiser of the year, and it is routinely described as one of the biggest arts-and-crafts festivals in the Southeast.

When is the Flowertown Festival?

Late March or the first weekend of April, Friday through Sunday. Two data points: March 27–29 in 2026, April 2–4 in 2027. Live 5 News reported 2025’s as the 52nd festival, which puts the first one in the early 1970s and means it has not missed many years.

Expect the same hours each year. Friday and Saturday open at 9 and close at 6. Sunday opens at 9 and closes at 4.

How big is it?

Big enough that Summerville, a town of about 51,000, roughly quadruples for the weekend. Visit Summerville puts attendance at about 250,000 over three days. Live 5 quotes organizers at more than 200,000. Wikipedia says about 200,000. For 2025 the YMCA reported more than 400 vendor stalls, the most it had ever hosted, with artisans selling handmade goods, plus food trucks, live music, community performances, a farmers market, and a children’s area with rides and games. The Southeast Tourism Society has named it one of its Top 20 events in the region.

What does it cost?

Nothing to walk in. Wikipedia and the YMCA both describe admission and parking as free, though the YMCA notes that some lots around downtown charge. You pay for what you buy from vendors and for the children’s rides.

Where do you park?

The YMCA’s advice is to use the lots and side streets around downtown. Some lots are free and some charge. The festival publishes a map each year with parking and restroom locations on its site at summervilleymca.org/flowertown, and that is the thing to pull up before you leave. The vendor rows run down South Main Street itself, so do not plan on driving through downtown. Smoking, pets, drones, and alcohol are not allowed on the grounds.

If you are coming from Charleston, downtown Summerville is about 24 miles up US 78, or a little quicker on I-26. The town’s visitor center is at 402 North Main Street. Azalea Park is a few blocks south along South Main.

How did the Flowertown Festival start?

The YMCA and Visit Summerville both say 1973, when a small group of women put on an arts-and-crafts sale to raise money for the original Summerville Y. Wikipedia says 1972. Sources differ by a year. Either way it has grown from a church-fair-sized fundraiser into the Y’s main source of money for health and wellness programs, youth sports, and family memberships. In 2025 proceeds also helped put a YMCA van on the road to carry programs and food boxes into rural parts of the county.

Why is Summerville called Flower Town in the Pines?

Because the Chamber of Commerce said so in 1925, and the town had the azaleas to back it up. The park at the center of the festival began as 16 acres bought and given to the town in 1920 by a civic group that became the Flowertown Garden Club. In 1929 Mayor Grange Cuthbert asked a local nurseryman, George Segelken, for azaleas to fill it, and Segelken donated them. The result is Azalea Park, and the festival is timed to the bloom.

The pines came first. In 1899 an international congress of physicians named Summerville one of the two best places in the world for recovering from lung and throat disease, crediting the dry sandy ridge and the turpentine the pine woods gave off. The town sold itself as a health resort on the strength of that for a generation. Then came the flowers.

What else is nearby?

Summerville is the front door to Dorchester County. Colonial Dorchester State Historic Site, with its 1751 bell tower and tabby fort, is about ten minutes south of Azalea Park. The Audubon boardwalk at Beidler Forest is half an hour west. St. George and the Edisto River are another half hour past that. I have a page on a day trip that strings those together.

The dispatches on this site are set in the other end of the county, forty miles upriver from Charleston, where the azaleas are fewer and the pines were cut a long time ago. The county history is the place to start, and the map puts Summerville and St. George on the same page so you can see how far apart they are.