with Robert Balentine
Via The Southeast and North Carolina Chapters
August 22, 2023
In June 2023 the Southeast Chapter of the ICAA, in collaboration with the North Carolina Chapter, hosted the ICAA Southeast Bunny Mellon Garden Symposium - An Exploration of Southeastern Landscapes: Mountains to Prairies. Designers, students, and enthusiasts gathered for a three-day conference in Lake Toxaway, North Carolina, enjoying tours and lectures by preeminent experts in garden and landscape design.
The Symposium's first lecture was presented by Robert Balentine, who introduced the guests to the Southern Highlands Reserve, the nonprofit organization he founded with his wife Betty Balentine. Located in western North Carolina at an elevation of 4,500 feet, the Southern Highlands Reserve is a woodland garden that protects a unique ecosystem of the Blue Ridge Mountains through the preservation, cultivation, and display of plants native to the region and by advocating for their value through education, restoration, and research. In his lecture, Robert offers a brief history of the region's flora and fauna, and then presents a behind-the-scenes look at how the Reserve is working to protect these species today.
Robert Balentine is a life-long outdoor enthusiast and conservationist. He is the incoming board chair of The Garden Conservancy, whose board he joined in 2015, and the founding president of the Southeastern Horticultural Society. In 2002, Balentine and his wife, Betty, founded Southern Highlands Reserve as a woodland garden to integrate hands-on research and education with conservation of the ecology of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. In 2017, they received the Preservation Hero Award from the Library of American Landscape History.
Presented as part of the Bunny Mellon Curricula at the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. The ICAA is very grateful to the Gerard B. Lambert Foundation for its generous support of this program, along with the Bunny Mellon Curricula Sponsors:
Lead Sponsor, Hollander Design Landscape Architects
Garden Symposium Sponsor, Kathryn M. and Ronald J. Herman Charitable Foundation
Garden Design Prize Sponsor, Harrison Design
Continuing Education and Public Programs Sponsor, Charlotte Moss
Film Series Sponsor, Janice Parker Landscape Architects
Additional support provided by ICAA Southeast and North Carolina Chapter Sponsors:
Gold Sponsor:
Liza Bryan Interiors
Silver Sponsors:
Alex Smith Garden Design, LTD
Howard Design Studio
Jacquelynne P. Lanham Designs
Lake Toxaway Company ~ Mo Mitchell & Mish Nichols
Marmi Stone
Pursley Dixon Architecture, Inc.
Friend Sponsors:
Green Visions Landscape
JALA Landscape Architecture
MATERIAL Bespoke Stone +Tile
Sharon K. Hopper Fine Gardening
Summerour Architects
The Outdoor Lights
Wyatt Childs, Inc.
In collaboration with the Southern Highlands Reserve:
Betty and Robert Balentine, Founders
Kelly Holdbrooks, Executive Director
Eric Kimbrel, Director of Horticulture
Tags: world of classicism, bunnymellon, sustainability
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