Been over 20 years ago so it may be a bigger attraction…but at the time I considered Stowe Botanical Garden a poor value for the admission cost. (Gastonia, NC)
No relic forests there…all 30 years old or less.
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I visited there about 12 years ago, I barely remember the place, so I guess that says everything. Granted, I was much less interested in plants at the time.
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I imagine you’re in an area that’s challenging to raise some things? I’ve driven 70, 74 and I-40…en-route to the beaches…don’t think any of those go through your city.
Haha, well, my biggest challenge is not having enough land for everything I want. I’m on the downslope of a river bluff/ridgeline with a mostly loamy soil. It has alright drainage but stays wet longer than I’d like due to water working its way downhill and years of compaction before I got it.
Out here almost everything is flat, but I’m close enough to the Tar river to have a fair bit of topography.
Yeah, none of those pass through Greenville. Despite how close we are to the coast, none of the main roads leading to the beach come this way. We’ve just got 264, which doesn’t really go anywhere except the inshore side of the Pamlico.
I do really like this area though. We moved here for the city, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by flora and fauna over here. I expected the kind of excessively well-drain piney nonethingness that dominates around where I used to live in Wilson NC, except even flatter. Over there, while you do get some mixed hardwoods forests with nice oaks and whatnot, it’s usually only in bottomlands, everything else is just sweetgum and loblolly, with a generous sprinkling of invasive chinaberry and mimosa. Somehow, coming out here even deeper into the Coastal Planes, the woods are actually more diverse. Even no-name swamps and little creeks have a lot of bald cypress, and we get some pretty epic swamp tupelo closer to the river. The mixed hardwoods bottomlands here are more pervasive, and things like beech and beautyberry, which I had only ever seen growing in the Piedmont before, are quite common down here. Downriver a bit from us they’ve got some remnant Atlantic white cedar. I see a lot more live oaks and native palms in horticultural use here too, which I appreciate.
Lots of bear in this area. And I regularly see bald eagles, which is always satisfying.
It doesn’t hurt that while my old town had all of one decent park and zero trails, Greenville has several really nice parks, a few more in construction, and a really extensive greenway that’s being massively expanded, so actually going out and seeing these woods and swamps is much easier.
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Sounds like a nice place, Greenville. Safe to raise children, etc., too I imagine.
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I planted 20 over 30 yrs ago. They all died except 3. When I moved here there was one on the proprty and that one is the healthiest even with adelgid. It may have a genetic advantage.
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Relic forests. Anyone having success growing Canaan Fir trees?
Subspecies of Balsam fir.
I planted 3 over a decade ago in Berea KY (z6b) that look great. One in 8a in North Carolina died late the first summer.
Your Asian acer…I’ve thought about ordering an evergreen maple tree from Forest Farm in Oregon. But, I think first time below zero and I’d have to add it to the brush pile.
Yeah, while there are a bunch of different species, zone 6 is pretty tough, I don’t know if any would be hardy there. Zone 6 is starting to get pretty rough for most broad-leafed evergreens.
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