Winter Park's Autumn Art Festival Moved to November. Now It Shares a Weekend With Mead Garden's GROWvember.
For as long as most Winter Park calendars go back, the Autumn Art Festival has been held in October. This year it falls on November 14 and 15. That puts it on the same two days as GROWvember, the fall festival and plant sale at Mead Botanical Garden. The Chamber moved the festival because of hurricanes. One effect of the move is that Winter Park now has a single weekend holding both of its big fall outdoor festivals. The hours, the parking and a relocated farmers' market decide how that weekend works.
The Winter Park Chamber of Commerce had held the festival in October every year since at least 1995. That run started before October became known as one of the most active months of Florida's hurricane season. Winter Park Voice reported the move in October 2025. The storm history it laid out makes the case on its own:
Chamber President and CEO Betsy Gardner announced the change the week after the 2025 show closed. She said the festival "has in the past been threatened – and even cancelled – by hurricane risks." The Chamber's stated goal is to move "away from peak hurricane season as well as into cooler fall weather."
The Chamber still describes it as the only juried fine art festival that features Florida artists exclusively. The Chamber's artist page lists 186 Florida artists, including last year's Best of Show, Award of Excellence and Award of Distinction winners, each in a 10-by-10-foot booth. More than $20,000 goes to artists every year through awards and patron art dollars. The new date is what creates the overlap.
GROWvember is Mead Botanical Garden's yearly plant sale. Its 2026 dates are the same Saturday and Sunday as the art festival. Here is how the two compare:
| Autumn Art Festival | GROWvember Fall Fest & Plant Sale | |
|---|---|---|
| Dates | Sat.–Sun., Nov. 14–15, 2026 | Sat.–Sun., Nov. 14–15, 2026 |
| Hours | 9 a.m.–5 p.m. | 9 a.m.–3 p.m. |
| Where | Central Park, along Park Avenue | Mead Botanical Garden |
| Getting in | Street parking nearby, plus the Truist and Canton Avenue garages | No admission charge, free parking |
| Food and drink | Beer garden in front of the entertainment stage | Food trucks and a beer garden |
| Weather | Not stated | Rain or shine |
Both events open at 9 a.m. Mead closes two hours before Central Park does. If you want to do both in one day, start at Mead and end on Park Avenue. You will also have your plants before the afternoon crowd at the art show. Mead's sale covers annuals, perennials, houseplants, native plants that draw hummingbirds and pollinators, bromeliads, herbs, succulents, ferns, orchids and medicinal plants. The city's Urban Forestry department is giving away trees there. Some of those trees will be headed for yards around Winter Park, so it helps to plan the car trip home before you go.
Each event also has live music. Mead lists live music and kids' activities for GROWvember. As of early October, the Chamber still says to "check back closer to the festival" for its entertainment lineup and children's art activities.
If you plan to buy art, the Chamber sells two packages. The 2026 Patron package costs $600 for two people. It includes two two-day VIP Lounge passes and $300 in art dollars to spend with exhibitors. The VIP ticket costs $150 per person. It covers a catered lunch, premium drinks, gourmet snacks, two days of lounge access and a signed festival poster. Official posters and note cards are also sold along Park Avenue during festival hours.
The weekly Saturday Farmers' Market usually runs from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Central Park's West Meadow, at New York Avenue and Morse Boulevard. The city says the market moves to Seven Oaks Park a few times a year when big events use the meadow, and it names the Autumn Art Festival as one of them. The city has not posted a relocation notice for November 14 yet, and it asks shoppers to watch its social channels for exact dates. For the March 21 Sidewalk Art Festival this spring, the market moved to Seven Oaks Park at 1150 N. Orange Ave. and kept its 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. hours.
If November follows that pattern, Saturday the 14th will have three outdoor gatherings in three places across Winter Park. Here is what affects getting around that morning:
Moving the festival also changes what the artists will see when they set up. Phase 1 of the city's Park Avenue Refresh runs from Webster Avenue to Garfield Avenue. It adds new street lights, sidewalk repairs, sidewalk intersections built out for pedestrian safety, and larger planter boxes sized for tree growth. The city's September 9 update covered the finishing touches between Swoope and Garfield. Those include reinforced decorative planter pots with bollards and seasonal plantings. Businesses stayed open throughout the work.
City communications director Clarissa Howard told The Community Paper that Phase 1 will finish on time, before the holiday shopping season starts.
"We are looking forward to even more improvements as we continue Phase 2 of the Refresh in the new year."
Phase 2 is scheduled to start in January 2027. It covers Park Avenue from Garfield to New England avenues, which includes the Central Park side of the street. The last phase, from New England to Fairbanks, is expected to start in January 2028. So the first November festival comes right after the northern blocks are finished and about two months before construction moves to the blocks along the park.
With the art festival gone from October, the month's cultural calendar is mostly indoors. The Morse Museum opens its 2026–27 season on October 13 with Revolt in the Parlor: Escaping Victorian Taste. The show has more than 250 objects across three galleries and covers art and design from 1890 to 1959. The Polasek Museum holds Polasek Nights: Into the Wild on October 20 from 6 to 8 p.m. The Annie Russell Theatre at Rollins presents the North American premiere of The Bounds from October 22 to 25.
Festival weekend has more going on around it, too:
After that weekend, the holiday season follows quickly. The Winter Park Playhouse runs A Christmas Survival Guide from November 20 to December 20 at its renovated home at 711 N. Orange Ave. The Annie Russell Theatre stages its Expressions dance concert on November 20 and 21. Christmas in the Park comes back to Central Park on December 3 from 6:15 to 8:30 p.m., with Tiffany windows and a Bach Festival Society choir and brass concert. If your weekends are already busy with Park Avenue dining, our look at Winter Park's best new tables this fall covers the restaurants a few blocks away.
At Nectar Real Estate, we keep track of how weekends like this one shape life in Winter Park, from a festival schedule to the blocks a streetscape project reaches next. If you're thinking about what your home near Park Avenue or Mead Garden is worth as the Refresh moves south, get your personalized home valuation and we'll go through it with you.
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