Garden & Gun April/May 2019

ADVERTISEMENT Bermuda’s Most Stylish Hotels From historic oceanfront resorts to intimate cottage colonies tucked into the hillsides, Bermuda offers many idyllic choices for where to stay. Private beaches, rolling golf courses, fine dining, and attention-to-detail service are just some of the perks you’ll find. Here are three destinations providing refined accommodations for the perfect year-round escape. After a few days, it’s easy to understand why Mark Twain famously wrote, “You can go to heaven if you want. I’d rather stay [in Bermuda].” Fairmont Hamilton Princess & Beach Club: The refurbished hotel overlooks the breathtaking Hamilton Harbour and has been an elegant escape for discerning travelers since1885. Contemporary-art connoisseurs find true captivation by the owners’ personal collection on open display throughout the property, featuring works from Andy Warhol, Banksy, and Jeff…

Corey Alston PRESERVING GULLAH CULTURE IN CHARLESTON HISTORY LOVES COMPANY CHARLESTON, SC Among the stalls at Charleston, South Carolina’s City Market, fifth-generation artisan Corey Alston continues his family’s time-honored trade, sweetgrass-basket weaving, at his Gullah Sweetgrass Baskets stand. From traditional S-handled and fanning baskets to one-of-a-kind commissions, his designs stand out as much for their artistry as for their meticulous construction. But Alston is more than just an artist; he’s also an ambassador for what makes Charleston culturally unique. Why is Charleston the perfect place for your art? My craft was brought here from the west coast of Africa, and it has stayed here generationally as a heritage passed from parent to child. The culture of my people, the Gullah, is a fundamental element of Charleston. What is one thing…

ADVERTISEMENT Design Notes Garden & Gun style director Haskell Harris breaks down the transformation of the magazine’s historic Cigar Factory office space When the G&G team, led by style director Haskell Harris, began dreaming up the design for the magazine’s new digs inside Charleston, South Carolina’s revamped Cigar Factory—during the early part of the twentieth century, 1.5 million cigars were hand rolled daily at the historic East Bay Street building, built in 1881—they wanted the place to feel more like the homes depicted within the magazine’s glossy pages than a corporate New York–style office space. “I think Southerners, in general, feel really comfortable in environments that are welcoming and relaxed,” Harris says. “The space may have refined elements, but on the whole, they are pretty laid-back.” To help achieve that…

EDITOR’S LETTER Biscuits 101 A NEWBIE TAKES ON A SOUTHERN KITCHEN STAPLE DAVID DIBENEDETTO Senior Vice President & Editor in Chief PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARGARET HOUSTON I have a confession to make. Until recently, I had never baked biscuits from scratch. Oh, I’ve eaten plenty, whether at the nearest Bojangles’ after duck hunts (yes, I think that chain wins the fast-food biscuit war) or while visiting Blackberry Farm (those biscuits made the cover of G&G’s October/November 2012 issue). And though my Southern cooking repertoire does include such standards as smoked pork butt, venison chili, and fried sea trout over grits, I was inspired by this issue to finally rectify the glaring hole in my kitchen skills. I started by calling Karl Worley, who with his wife, Sarah, runs Nashville’s Biscuit Love,…

Kicking Plastic If you follow me on Instagram, you know I love my family, the outdoors, and my dogs, and I hate single-use plastics, especially water bottles. This year my family made a pact to go water-bottle free and instead opt for reusable ones. The reasons are obvious. Americans used fifty billion plastic water bottles in 2017, and roughly thirty-eight billion of those were not recycled. Sadly, you don’t have to look far to see where many of them end up. My kids make a sport of picking up bottles littering the marsh and floating on our waterways, and at the local soccer field, we often find more strewn about than we can lug to the recycling bin. And while I realize we can’t stem the tide of plastic pollution…

ADVERTISEMENT The Home Stretch Experience Louisiana homes and history on a trip along the Great River Road Illustrations by Hannah George, represented by Meiklejohn.co.uk. Starting more than two hundred years ago, some of America’s grandest residences were constructed along a roughly hundred-mile stretch of the Mississippi River, running from New Orleans westward toward Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital. “Plenty of dwellings all the way, on both banks—standing so close together, for long distances, that the broad river lying between the two rows, becomes a sort of spacious street,” Mark Twain wrote in Life on the Mississippi in the late 1800s. Today many of these homes are open to visitors, offering historically minded tours, authentic tastes of Louisiana seafood, and unforgettable overnight stays. 1. Nottoway Plantation and Resort White Castle John Randolph…