Big Week in Southern Pines, 3 Events

Tuesday, Oct. 27--Long-Range Planning Meeting, the last one for public comments, Sunrise Theater

Wednesday, Oct. 28--Our Cultural Landscape lecture by Charles Birnbaum, Sunrise Theater, 7:00, FREE

THE CLASSICAL DESIGN FOUNDATION presents CHARLES BIRNBAUM, Founder and President of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, Washington, DC. Introduction by Lawrence Earley, author of "Looking for Longleaf, The Fall and Rise of an American Forest."

When a design is successful, how long is it worth keeping? When the design is a landscape of historical significance, why should we care? Understanding the value of where we live will be the subject of “Our Cultural Landscape.” This event unites two acclaimed speakers in an illustrated talk on the natural and man-made beauty that defines the singular character of the Southern Pines landscape.

Charles Birbaum is the Founder and President of The Cultural Landscape Foundation in Washington, DC. Recognized for his ground-breaking achievements in preserving endangered landscapes throughout the United States, Mr. Birbaum will turn his attention to the Sandhills--from our lumber and turpentine industry past, to the development of James Boyd's Weymouth estate.

As the Vanderbilts were to Asheville or the Tufts to Pinehurst, so were the Boyds to Southern Pines. Under their influence, town founders overcame the devastations of clear-cutting that by the turn of the twentieth century had left a wasteland. With emphasis on plantings of native flora along with naturalized drought-tolerant ornamentals, Southern Pines emerged as a "garden place." A leader in this movement was Alfred Yeomans, a Boyd family relative who guided town landscape design in a patchwork of efforts spanning more than half a century.

Lawrence Earley, author of "Looking for Longleaf, The Fall and Rise of an American Forest," will describe the cultural and natural history of our region's longleaf pine habitat, setting the stage for an understanding of Southern Pines as a resort named for a forest, and why residents should sustain our landscape heritage.

Thursday, Oct. 29, 7:00 --Save Our Sandhills Meets at Civic Club, downtown Sou. Pines. Craven Hudson on the topic “More people, same land . . . What are we going to do?”