News & Updates

“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme” ~ Mark Twain The Irish Potato Famine has gone down in history as one of the worst tragedies of the 19th century. In...

Southern Highlands Reserve will host its 2018 Native Plant Symposium on Saturday, May 19. This year's topic is “The Role of Pollinators in the Landscape.”   Dr....

Wintertime is not a gardener’s time to hibernate, rather, it is a time to actively plan for the coming year’s activities and prepare the gardens for the growth of...

Southern Highlands Reserve (SHR) is pleased to announce the development of a digital database to advance its work in native plant research and education. The database...

2017 was a banner year for the Reserve in many ways. SHR made its mark by changing the mountain landscape, planting over 900 red spruce trees on public land near Black Balsam with the first ever restoration project for the endangered Carolina Northern Flying Squirrel. The organization’s landscape changed in 2017 as well, welcoming two new staff members and celebrating the retirement of our inaugural Greenhouse Manager, Sue Owen.

The carbon cycle is a part of our daily lives, although most of us probably wouldn’t realize just how personally it affects us. The carbon cycle is directly linked to...

When people aligned in the same mission gather together and work cooperatively towards a common goal, an interconnectivity emerges. Linking pieces of information, relationships and people together begins to form one larger, more valuable picture. Each individual piece of the puzzle is important alone but when connected, as the great philosopher Aristotle observed, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

On September 18th and 19th, representatives from the Southern Appalachian Spruce Restoration Initiative (SASRI) gathered in Black Balsam to restore red spruce on public lands in Western NC. Over 900 young red spruce trees were carried on foot and horseback by dozens of volunteers and members of SASRI to their new home deep in the woods on public lands. In two days, these dedicated conservationists made at least seven trips down the Flat Laurel Branch Trail, some logging 14 miles for the day. The red spruce trees were grown by Southern Highlands Reserve as part of a larger long-term effort to restore red spruce to its high-elevation native habitat on public lands in the Southern Blue Ridge Mountains.

The onset of hurricane and fire season this year has brought an alarming degree of destruction to communities across the planet and disruption to the delicate balance of ecosystems. Record-breaking precipitation levels, fires, storm intensity, and storm frequency parallel the predictions of climate scientists for the past two decades: as oceans warm, we will observe increased storm activity, frequency, and intensity. In light of the devastation of recent extreme weather events from Hurricane Harvey and Irma on such a harrowing scale, we ask ourselves: are we powerless to stop this kind of catastrophic damage from happening again? What can we do at home to reduce our ecological footprint and adapt to the predicted long-term weather conditions? Further, what can we do to help strengthen the resiliency of our ecosystems and empower others to leave this earth better than we found it for future generations?