A Conversation with Kelly Holdbrooks from Southern Highlands Reserve
At 4500 feet above sea level, Southern Highlands Reserve is home to a high-elevation garden encompassing an exceptionally diverse array of flora and fauna. There, a wildflower labyrinth bursts with purple and pale yellow blossoms, bullfrog tadpoles swim in shallow water, and clusters of flowers bloom at the brush of a bee. Along with the rest of her team, Kelly Holdbrooks, executive director of the Reserve, is tasked with preserving this beautiful biodiversity.
“Western North Carolina is one of the most biologically diverse areas in the world,” Kelly explains. This is partially because of a southern migration thousands of years ago, as species escaped the spreading glaciers of the Ice Age. “They came down the spine of the Appalachian Trail and found what we refer to as ‘sky islands,’ where they can exist,” Kelly says.
In more recent times, however, logging has harmed the region’s forests. The Southern Appalachian Spruce Restoration Initiative (SASRI), of which the Reserve is a founding member, agreed that red spruces served as the “best hope” for repopulating forests in the region that were never able to fully recover.
The Reserve has spent the last ten years propagating and growing new red spruces for distribution across southern Appalachia. They are currently building a high-tech greenhouse to serve as a nursery for the spruces, enabling them to grow more trees than ever before.
In the video below, Kelly talks about how her team is increasing the Reserve’s biodiversity through sustainable landscaping, as well as her own personal love for the environment she works every day to preserve.
Readers can support the Reserve’s Green-light the Greenhouse initiative here.
