Southern Highland Reserve

  
Several weeks ago, our group from Maine had the privilege of visiting the Southern Highlands Reserve in Lake Toxaway, North Carolina. The reserve consists of 120 acres nestled high upon the Appalachian mountains at 4500 feet elevation. SHR is the property of Robert and Betty Balentine who bought the property as a retreat from the hustle and bustle of Atlanta. Over time, they have worked with Gary Smith and Dick Bir to design unique gardens with local plants. 

The gardens are magical and the views out over the North Carolina foothills are breathtaking. I had heard a lot about these gardens from Gary Smith so I was anxious to see what had been done on the property. Among the woods on the top of this mountain, what they have created is as powerful to me as the gardens at Rousham or Dumbarton Oaks. The designs are sublime and the use of native plants en masse is pure genius. One of my favorite spots is the wildflower labyrinth. The size and scale of the labyrinth is comfortable, even for our group consisting of over 40 adults. I enjoyed watching our group walk back and forth among the paths, smiling and laughing at each other while peering above the plants.

As you make your way into the woods, you encounter a mass planting of hay-scented ferns which sways gently back and forth amongst the breeze. The way the light reflected off of the fronds, it reminded me a bit of the gentle waves over the ocean along the Maine coast. Among the ferns, we saw beautiful, nodding pink trillium.

  
Along the entire experience, Smith, Bir, and Balentine have worked with the staff to create a beautiful composition. The garden choreography goes from woodland setting to open, natural room with spectacular vistas of the Appalachian mountains and Carolina landscape. As Kent did at Rousham and Smith did at Peirce’s Woods in Longwood Gardens, this garden is orchestrated to the sublime. I am already longing to go back and to take more notes, more pictures, and to spend more time enjoying this wonderful reserve. 

– Rodney

Dryopteris – The Jason Bourne of Ferns

  
I have had a fondness for ferns since I took up gardening as an occupation in North Carolina. One winter, I was running through a state forest where nothing was green on the forest floor except for Polystichum acrostichoides, Christmas fern. This was in the early 1990’s and I remember stopping to marvel at how these ferns were still alive during a cold winter. As the years have gone by, I have constantly had a favorite fern for certain periods of time. After the Christmas fern, there was the holly fern, Cyrtomium falcatum. Not long after college, I began working at Plant Delights Nursery where I fell in love with the wood ferns: Dryopteris. Most of the hardy ferns that I had known were somewhat smaller in size but here was a group of ferns that could reach 3-4′ in height!

  
Now that I am gardening in Maine, I am rekindling my fondness for Dryopteris. In our Rhododendron Garden at CMBG, there is a mass planting of Dryopteris crassirhozoma. When I first walked by the plants at the edge of a gravel path, I stopped in amazement. The green and brown fronds were over 3 feet in height and arched beautifully up towards the sky. Most ferns appear frilly and delicate but D. crassirhozoma was big and bold. They are like the Jason Bourne of ferns. The last two winters were brutal along the Maine coast but like Bourne, these ferns just keep coming back for more. 

This winter, while searching for new ferns for a woodland garden, I came across Dryopteris goldiana. When I read that this North American native was even larger than D. crassirhozoma, I thought, “where have you been all of my woodland life?” In the next few weeks, we will plant a mass of D. goldiana and then I will wait in anticipation to see it grow and become as massive as the literature touts it to be. Also, with nearly 250 species of Dryopteris in the world, I look forward to growing as many of these as we can find.

-Rodney

Images: Pling-Belgium, WI and CalPhotos