Innholdsfortegnelse for April/May 2021 i Garden & Gun

EDITOR’S LETTER A Room of Our Own TRANSFORMING A LITTLE-USED SPACE INTO A FAVORITE SPOT IN THE HOUSE After more than five years in our current home, my wife, Jenny, and I realized we had ceded much of the space to our children and dogs. While we were trying to decide on the right table for the dining room, it morphed into a playroom—and stayed that way. The kitchen remains a perfect spot to be ambushed by hungry kids or stumble over a Magna-Tiles creation, and a spot on the living room couch comes complete with a dog’s head in your lap. “We really could use a room for us,” Jenny said one night after all the creatures were asleep. The only available choice was the guest room, a ten-by-thirteen-foot…

LETTERS “Latria Graham’s writing makes you see, smell, and taste a new adventure” CONNECT THE DOTS I was so excited to see the stories in the February/March 2021 issue. My husband lived in Bermuda during his childhood and when we took a cruise there, he was able to find an old friend from fifty years ago (“Sea Change”). We now live in Texas and are having a real problem with wild hogs (“High on the Hog”), and I’m excited to read about Fredericksburg, the Texas town on the rise (Weekends). Amy Van Artsdalen Cleburne, Texas It’s hard to sum up “Outside the Lines” (February/March 2021), but in a nutshell, Cora Kelley Ward, like so many who do creative work, should have been honored more when she was alive. John Kamp…

Poetry of Place An essential primer on literary Mississippi “The Southern writer is forced from all sides to make his gaze extend beyond the surface…,” Flannery O’Connor wrote, “until it touches that realm which is the concern of prophets and poets.” In his new book, A Place Like Mississippi (Timber Press), W. Ralph Eubanks shares that O’Connor line, and then weaves interviews, images, and reflections to understand why the Magnolia State seems to have nurtured more prophets and poets than any other scrap of Southern soil. Beyond the usual odes to Faulkner and Welty, Eubanks examines how the people and pain of Mississippi’s past and present continue to help writers winnow their words. The modern literary titan Jesmyn Ward, for instance, pauses on a drive with Eubanks in a quiet…

ANATOMY OF A CLASSIC Spring Flavor RALEIGH CHEF CHEETIE KUMAR’S SPICE-TINGED ODE TO SEASONAL VEGGIES—AND BRIGHTER DAYS AHEAD By Kim Severson PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOHNNY AUTRY Food and prop styling by Charlotte Autry For hyperseasonal chefs like Cheetie Kumar, Southern spring vegetables are a wonder. “I want all of the crunchy things and all of the green things,” says Kumar, the chef and co-owner of Garland in Raleigh. Last spring, as the nation shut down for the pandemic, she didn’t have the time to celebrate early season vegetables. Instead, she was scrambling. She and her husband, Paul Siler, temporarily closed the cozy bar they run below Garland and the airy performance space they operate above it. And at the restaurant, Kumar shifted from creating delicate vegetable-forward dishes seasoned with ginger, coconut,…

BY JOHN T. EDGE Italian Survivor A FEW MINUTES FROM GRACELAND, VALLE’S BOASTS FORTY YEARS OF HISTORY AND ONE DIVINE MUFFULETTA Illustration by Michael SpitzPHOTOGRAPHS BY JACQUELINE STOFSICK Served on a crackly round of house-baked bread, layered with ham, salami, roast beef, provolone, and mozzarella, the muffuletta at Valle’s in Memphis is a baroque and sloppy beauty, leaking oil and vinegar and joy. A quiet man with a shy and impish smile, Louie Valle dresses his take on the New Orleans sandwich with mushrooms and green peppers, bound by what tastes like a homemade version of Wish-Bone Italian dressing. Presented on a foam plate with a handful of Ruffles, priced at seven bucks and change, it’s one of the most satisfying sandwiches I’ve eaten in the past decade. That’s not…

IN THE GARDEN Nashville Showstopper A HISTORIC ESTATE PROVIDES THE STAGE FOR AN AWARD-WORTHY REVIVAL By Elizabeth Hutchison Hicklin PHOTOGRAPHS BY TEC PETAJA There’s a linen-bound journal on a table in the sunroom overlooking the gardens at Nashville’s historic Craighead House, where the owner Steve Sirls, a landscape designer by trade, keeps sporadic but detailed accounts of the gardens’ goings-on. Everything from favorite plants to parties gets recorded for posterity. One of the earliest entries recalls the “garden-warming” soiree friends threw Sirls and his husband, Allen De-Cuyper, on a fall evening just after they closed on the property in 1998. The house was empty, so they gathered by its fireplaces and on the grounds, and instead of wine bottles and tea towels, guests came bearing Japanese maples, armfuls of daylilies,…

BY M. O. WALSH A Puzzling Pooch ON TRYING TO UNDERSTAND WINNIE, THE WONDER-WHY-SHE-LOOKS-LIKE-THAT DOG If you want proof of God’s sense of humor, please take as exhibit A our dog Winnie’s inexplicable body. It’s nothing shocking, at first, no extra tail coming out of her head or anything like that, but give it a moment. You’ll see her nice tan color, a frame you can tell started out in the Labrador family before her ancestors made some dubious choices in romance. When she stands, though, take a look at her hind legs. They are too long, undoubtedly, and are in strange proportion to her front ones, as if she were put together by a child with mismatched Legos. You could place a marble on her rump and it would…

The LAKE House KEOWEE DREAM A LONG-AWAITED REFUGE REFLECTS ITS LAKESIDE LOCALE in the SOUTH CAROLINA FOOTHILLS NIC BROWN WILLIAM ABRANOWICZ Styling by Eleanor Roper THROUGH AN OPEN FRONT DOOR, THE PEA gravel courtyard outside the lake house flashes yellow in the sunlight, while just inside, a pale jute rug echoes the same patterns in beige. A breeze blows through the room, and as it passes from one side to the other, the boundaries between what’s inside and outside start to blur—as if the natural spaces here are simply other rooms in the house. “I was looking for something man-made that could fit in with what’s God-made,” says the Birmingham, Alabama, architect Jeffrey Dungan, whose firm won the 2020 Institute of Classical Architecture & Art Philip Trammell Shutze Award for…

FOOD Arkansas AN EVEN BETTER BISCUIT Chocolate gravy warm and slathered on a biscuit is dessert for breakfast. No one knows the precise origin of the Ozark and Appalachian sauce made with butter, sugar, cocoa, flour, and milk—Spanish Louisiana trade routes might have brought Mexican chocolate to early Appalachia, or perhaps it’s a riff on sweet sorghum syrup. Although chocolate gravy and biscuits are usually made at home (and would make a perfect Mother’s Day brunch addition on May 9), some Arkansas restaurants regularly serve them in the morning. “There’s not just one way to make chocolate gravy,” explains Jerri Todd, the co-owner of Ozark Cafe in Jasper, which has been serving it since the 1970s. “Some people use water, some make a roux, some add butter at the end.…

EQUESTRIAN Kentucky TENURE TRACK For Shannon Bishop Arvin, racing is a family affair—her grandfather served as the first general manager of Keeneland in Lexington, and her father became its lawyer and then a trustee. “I grew up around the track and always had a reverence for Keeneland,” Arvin says, and this year, she became the track’s first female CEO and president. “People would probably say that racing is a man’s industry, but I never let myself believe that being a woman was a limitation.” On April 2, horses line up for the first run of Keeneland’s spring race meet (through April 23). Two prime events of the season happen April 3: the Central Bank Ashland Stakes for three-year-old fillies and the Toyota Blue Grass Stakes for three-year-olds, respective prep races…

GARDEN Mississippi THE BONSAI WHISPERER The Memphis suburb of Olive Branch, Mississippi, is home to the country’s largest collection of miniature trees. Brussel’s Bonsai Nursery is roughly the size of New York’s Grand Central Station and stocks some 100,000 tiny trees, from $33 dwarf jades to a Japanese juniper worth thousands. Brussel Martin, who founded the nursery in 1973, says cooped-up quarantiners have doubled his sales during the pandemic: “I’m selling ten thousand trees a week; I can hardly keep up with the demand.” Martin ships all across the continental United States, but those who shop in person can tour the specimen house filled with rare bonsai, including that six-hundred-year-old juniper. Best season to visit? “Spring is by far the most spectacular time around here,” Martin says. “The place is…

OPENING Virginia ESTATE PLANNING In 1912, Robert B. Crawford built a Georgian Revival and Italian-style manor just outside Charlottesville, ordered a menagerie of peacocks and miniature donkeys, and called the whole thing Villa Crawford. It didn’t stay in the family long, and eventually fell into ruin. Sir Bernard Ashley, the widower of famed British textile designer Laura Ashley, rescued the estate in 1990 and promised to turn it into “your uncle’s great country mansion,” decking the walls with his late wife’s wallpaper, adding a snooker room, and faux-wood painting the elevators. “Thoseare going to go,” says current co-owner Molly Hardie, who with her husband, Robert—they also own the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville—has spent the past four years gutting what today operates as an inn called Keswick Hall. When it reopens…

Booze Bag An elegant solution for toting your favorite bottles If you’re like me, you don’t show up for a night at duck camp or a week at the beach without a few bottles in tow. Often I tuck mine between duffel bags so they survive the ride, although I’ve lost a few while unloading the vehicle in a less-than-careful manner. The Mississippi company Wren & Ivy aims to solve that dilemma with its new Distiller’s Traveler Case ($450; ggfieldshop.com). With space for six bottles, it’s made with waxed twill canvas and bridle leather, so you’ll arrive in style and with the goods intact.…

Social Chatter GARDENANDGUN.COM AND BEYOND WE ASKED... What are you planting this spring? In our Talk of the South newsletter, readers told us what they’re most excited to grow this year. Moonvine, hyacinth bean, and sunflowers. Robert E. I always plant yellow tomatoes, basil, and mint for salads, sandwiches, and eye candy. Cynthia G. I will plant peas so the neighbor kids can taste raw sweet peas straight from the pods. William H. I plan on reviving my herb garden into a salsa garden. Nicole S. I hope to have enough peanuts for one good boil with beer and friends. Mac M. Aunt Lou’s Underground Railroad heirloom tomatoes from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Lisa J. Satan’s Kiss peppers that I stuff with fresh mozzarella. Pamela S. My new favorite cucumber…

SPORTING SCENE Wing Commander AN ACE EASTERN SHORE WOOD-CARVER SHARES LESSONS IN HOW HE CRAFTS HIS ACCLAIMED DECOYS By Monte Burke PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVE COOPER Rich Smoker, a sixty-eight-year-old Maryland decoy carver, says he never begins work on one of his coveted birds until he actually feels a visualization of it bubble up inside him. “I have to be inspired,” he says. “That’s the biggest part of the entire process.” Inspiration, as it turns out, is all around him. Smoker’s home and woodshop are on an island in the Big Annemessex River on Maryland’s lower Eastern Shore, right in the middle of the Atlantic Flyway, one of North America’s four major migratory bird routes. “Looking out of my window today I’ve seen buffleheads, surf scoters, and some ruddy ducks,” Smoker…

ASK G&G Fine and Dandy FOP FATES, MOWING FANATICS, AND TEXAS SUBDIVISIONS By Guy Martin ILLUSTRATION BY BRITT SPENCER Is the Southern dandy extinct, or are some still left on the hoof ? As fashion fauna goes, the South’s peacock is not endangered. Back when dressy spring garden parties for two hundred were possible, one Alabama hostess calculated that more than twenty pairs of double cuffs per hundred men made any event look like “a gamblers’ convention stuck out on a fake riverboat on stilts in the mud south of Memphis.” But it’s a long way from egregious male jewelry to the level of care that a full-time peacock devotes to his plumage, so let’s back up. His biographers estimate that it took the infamous British pretty boy George Bryan…

MEET THE CHEF: CHEETIE KUMAR Hometown: Pittsburgh, but her family moved to Chandigarh, India, when she was a baby. When she was eight, they moved to the Bronx. What she would grab if the house was on fire: Her mortar and pestle, her spice box, and a little packet of garam masala in the freezer that her late mother made. Other career: She and her husband started the psychedelic rock band Birds of Avalon in 2004 and continue to make records. Trait she inherited from her father: “The inability not to work.”…

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH EN CORE® AZALEA Worthy of an Encore CREATED BY AN INVENTIVE LOUISIANA HORTICULTURIST, THESE SEASON-DEFYING AZALEAS BURST WITH COLOR NEARLY ALL YEAR While each Southern season brings its own rich foliage, spring is when the region’s storied gardens truly shine, their soft pastels and vibrant greens painting the landscape. While dogwoods, zinnias, and wisteria certainly spark enchantment, Southerners have a soft spot for azaleas, the spring-blooming flowers known for candy-colored petals of pink, purple, and red. The striking blooms are synonymous with spring, creating a lush backdrop for the South’s most agreeable months. Like all good things, however, azalea season has always come to an end—until Encore Azalea came along, that is. It all began in Folsom, Louisiana, a rural village north of New Orleans. Growing up…

MADE IN THE SOUTH History Report A TENNESSEE GUNMAKER REPRODUCES A POWDER RIFLE WITH TIES TO DAVY CROCKETT By T. Edward Nickens PHOTOGRAPHS BY JASON MYERS Late one afternoon in 2015, Greg S. Murry, a black-powder rifle maker in Columbia, Tennessee, crouched over his workshop bench and tapped a drift punch with a hammer. Pins more than two hundred years old fell out of the forestock of an American muzzle-loading long rifle. Murry’s hands were shaking. By his side stood the gun’s owner, a woman descended from Samuel Crockett III, who with his son Andrew operated a highly acclaimed gunmaking business at Forge Seat, the family home south of Nashville, from the estate’s inception in 1808 until 1826. Those Crocketts were kin to the famed Davy Crockett, and soldiers had…

The BEACH Bungalow VISTA VISION A CLEVER LAYOUT and ARTFUL DECOR HELP a FAMILY MAKE the MOST of a 30A GETAWAY ELIZABETH HUTCHISON HICKLIN ALI HARPER Styling by Ginny Branch Stelling WHEN ALLYSON AND PAUL RISER FIRST set foot on the narrow lot along Highway 30A in the heart of Seaside, Florida, they were skeptical. In fact, they mistook the neglected strip of land as overflow parking for neighboring homes. “It looked like a patch of weeds,” Allyson admits. “I thought, You can’t put a house on this!” The location, however, was unparalleled. Situated catty-corner from Seaside’s town square and a few flip-flop-shod steps from the beach pavilion, the unique lot wasn’t quite beachfront, but no road separated it from the sand and the view still offered a wide window…

LAND OF THE GIANTS ON a SMALL RIVER OUTSIDE of ATLANTA, YEARS of CONSERVATION and STEWARDSHIP HAVE PAID OFF to CREATE a TROUT FISHERMAN’S PARADISE By T. EDWARD NICKENS PHOTO GRAPHS BY P ETER FRANK EDWARDS I COULD TELL YOU THAT IT’S THE RIVER I FIND SO ALLURING. In the headwaters, cornfields in the valleys nudge against sycamores and mountain laurel as the river, here little more than a creek, twists through banks clad in vine and wildflowers. Farther downstream, it gathers flow from limestone springs, and its rock-ribbed pools are cooled in the shade of soaring hemlock groves. The Soque River (pronounced so-quee) flows for about thirty miles contained in a single county—Habersham, merely four counties northeast of metro Atlanta—an intimacy that lends it a homey, winsome, tucked-just-out-of-sight…

SHOPS Creative Loafing SEVEN SOUTHERN BAKERIES THAT HONOR TRADITION—AND REINVENT IT By Caroline Sanders PHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT SUCHMAN “Bread is just flour, water, salt, and some alchemy,” says Susannah Gebhart, founder of Old World Levain Bakery in Asheville. She’s being modest, of course. Transforming a handful of pantry staples into something magical also takes a skilled baker, and the labor of devoted farmers and millers supplying high-quality grains and fresh ingredients. Whether their loaves embrace South Carolina rice, Virginia hard red winter wheat, or Louisiana sweet potatoes, these seven bakeries make up part of a new generation preserving an ancient art while also changing the way the South thinks about bread. Franklin Bakehouse FRANKLIN, TENNESSEE Randy Thompson says he feels almost like a mad scientist in the kitchen of Franklin…

TELEVISION Hemingway’s Reel World KEY WEST, FLORIDA “Big-game hunter. Deep-sea fisherman. Brawler. Drinker.” That’s how the filmmaker Ken Burns says he viewed Ernest Hemingway before shooting Hemingway, a three-part docuseries for PBS, which airs April 5–7. How does he see Papa now? “Ever questioning. Sensitive. Fearful. Complicated.” By combining rarely seen manuscripts and letters with expert interviews, Burns and his longtime collaborator, the director and producer Lynn Novick, reveal a man few really understood. “We worked hard to get past the myths surrounding his life,” Novick says. In the series, Jeff Daniels provides the voice of Hemingway, while Meryl Streep, Keri Russell, Mary-Louise Parker, and Patricia Clarkson voice his four wives. Hemingway pays close attention to the seminal backdrops of the writer’s life, including Key West, where he lived on…

CONSERVATION Georgia FEELING PECKISH When it’s time to nest, the red-cockaded woodpeckergets a little picky. “They need live pine trees that are old and infected with red heart fungus to make excavating easier,” says Chuck Martin, the director of the Nature Conservancy’s Moody Forest Preserve in southeastern Georgia. The endangered woodpecker, also known as the Yankee Doodle bird for the tiny strip of red on the males’ heads, is native to Southeastern pine forests, which are fast disappearing. Recently, it has received a boost from relocation programs: Biologists take young birds from healthy populations and release them into pine habitat with ready-made love shacks—cavities in younger trees that save the birds the one-to-three-year process of pecking out a nest. “We just always hope the released birds will hit it off,”…

OPENING Louisiana NEW IN NOLA After Hurricane Katrina, the colossal former New Orleans World Trade Center on Canal Street sat idle on the Mississippi riverfront. But on May 15, not only will it reopen as the Four Seasons Hotel New Orleans, but also the James Beard Award–winning chef Alon Shaya will bring delicious new life to the ground floor with his restaurant Miss River. (Then in October, chef Donald Link will join with a spot of his own.) Shaya’s other two restaurants, Saba in New Orleans and Safta in Denver, focus on the Israeli cuisine of his heritage, but Miss River highlights the worldliness of the Crescent City. Classic gumbo and Cajun couvillion will share menu space with dishes inspired by the farmers and fishermen Shaya has met over his…

OUTDOORS North Carolina OH, SNAP! “A Venus flytrap’s first true leaves are traps, and they come out snapping,” says Johnny Randall, the director of conservation at the North Carolina Botanical Garden in Chapel Hill. The teeny opportunistic, photosynthesizing predator is just one of thirty-two species of carnivorous plants native to North Carolina. The acidic and nutrient-poor wet pine savanna habitat that Venus flytraps call home, in the southeastern portion of the state, makes a juicy ant, spider, or beetle a welcome dietary boost. “Watching a Venus flytrap is like watching natural selection and evolution in action,” says Randall, who works to conserve the increasingly rare plant in the face of habitat loss, poaching, and fire suppression, and collects its seeds for the garden’s seed bank. In May, flytraps bloom with…

SPORTS West Virginia DIRT TRACK DREAMING Cody Watson, West Virginia Motor Speedway’s promoter, remembers his first visit to the dirt track. “I was maybe ten,” he says. “I brought my lawn chair up on the hillside, and then I heard the announcer say, ‘Here’s Scott Bloomquist out of Mooresburg, Tennessee!’” (Bloomquist is one of the best dirt track racers ever.) Racers can hit speeds of 160 miles per hour on the straightaway there, and for decades the venue, which opened in 1985, was known as the World’s Fastest Dirt Track. But in 2013, the track closed, and nature quickly moved in to reclaim it. Watson took over the lease last August, and with his own hands hacked back overgrown trees and weeds, laid fresh clay, and relandscaped the hillside spectator…

CONTRIBUTORS Jenny Everett WRITER After unearthing a list of topics that she’s written about for her What’s in Season columns, the Charleston, South Carolina, journalist Jenny Everett realized she’s covered more than seventy-five Southern foods since 2008, including kohlrabi, clams, sea beans, and in this issue, asparagus (p. 56). “My goal is always to find a chef or purveyor who is especially passionate about the ingredient,” she says. Everett, who has also contributed to Women’s Healthand ESPN.com, now curates G&G’s Kitchen Cabinet Face-book page. “It’s like a community cookbook come to life.” M. O. Walsh WRITER Throughout his life, M. O. Walsh has loved well-behaved dogs—primarily Labs. “They were just happy to be here,” he says. Then came Winnie, the mutt he wrote about for Good Dog (p. 91). Any…

INTERVIEW Chrissy Metz’s New Tune THE THIS IS US STAR FINDS HER VOICE By Allison Glock PHOTOGRAPHS BY AUSTIN HARGRAVE The actor and singer Chrissy Metz chuckles a little when she calls herself “a positive Polly.” Metz, who grew up in Gainesville, Florida, spent nine years as a talent agent, a natural fit for a woman accustomed to putting other folks first. “So much of my life has been lived for other people,” she explains, noting that it’s only now, at age forty—with an Emmy nomination for her poignant, unguarded portrayal of Kate on the NBC series This Is Us, among other accolades, under her belt—that she’s stopped asking, “Oh gosh, do I deserve this?” Traveling back and forth from L.A. to Nashville as she writes and records her first…

DRINKS Winning Kick A SUPERB GINGER SYRUP SPICES UP THE HOME COCKTAIL By Wayne Curtis PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHNNY AUTRY Food and prop styling by Charlotte Autry Tory Pratt grew up in a family of cooks—her parents were caterers and owned a smoked seafood business in Philadelphia. When she went to college in Washington, D.C., the quality of campus food surprised her, and not in an especially good way. She essentially became a full-time resident of the dorm kitchen, making meals more to her liking. (“I had people come and ask me for permission to use it,” she recalls.) After college, she continued tinkering. Among her projects: creating a tonic syrup that would go well with Green Hat Gin, a craft spirit made by the first distillery to open in D.C.…

Simple Chile and Honey Asparagus Yield: 3 or 4 servings INGREDIENTS 1 lb. asparagus, trimmed and cut into halves or thirds ½ Vidalia onion, julienned 3 tbsp. olive oil ¼ tsp. chile flakes 1 tsp. red wine vinegar 1 tsp. honey 2 cloves garlic, minced Kosher salt Black pepper 1 lemon PREPARATION Place asparagus, onion, olive oil, and chile flakes in a sauté pan. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until asparagus begins to brown and onions become tender, about 4 or 5 minutes. Add vinegar, honey, and garlic. Stir for 2 minutes to ensure everything is evenly coated. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve over risotto, creamy grits, or mashed potatoes with a squeeze of lemon.…

GARDEN & GUN LAND Kiawah River’s Lowcountry Allure AMID SOUTH CAROLINA’S IDYLLIC SEA ISLANDS, A NEW COMMUNITY TREASURES THE NATURAL WORLD ABOVE ALL Imagine a place where the pace of life is slow, a place where nature is abundant and neighbors feel like family. On the coast of the South Carolina Lowcountry, such a place exists, beckoning with the promise of a life lived simply. A new sea island community a mere twenty miles from Charleston, Kiawah River is built around the South’s most treasured values—hospitality, tradition, and a deep appreciation for the natural world. In its two-thousand-plus waterfront acres, the budding residential property encompasses Craftsman-style homes, communal gathering spaces, retail and recreation outlets, marshlands, and greenery as far as the eye can see. In each detail, the bliss of…

SOUTHERN STYLE Hit Refresh AFTER A LONG STRETCH OF BEING AT HOME, IT’S TIME TO REFEATHER YOUR NEST By Haskell Harris COLOR THERAPY Styling by Linden ElstranPHOTOGRAPHS BY ALICE GAO Changing the color of the walls around you, or even a mantel or a bookshelf, can have an uplifting effect. These hues in particular inspire a cheerful mood: the soft blush of Conch Shell by Benjamin Moore (benjaminmoore.com); the warmer pink of Rangwali, the bright crimson of Radicchio, or the poppy teal of Vardo, all by Farrow & Ball (farrow-ball.com); and the spring-in-the-South Lounge Green by Sherwin-Williams (sherwin-williams.com). SITTING PRETTY For those whose couch cushions have endured a few more dents than usual during the pandemic, the Dries sofa, a collaboration between the Southern native and Jayson Home executive Devin…

GREEN THUMB Southern Exchange CATCHING UP WITH BRITAIN’S STAR GARDENER MONTY DON, WHOSE WORK IS NOW CROSSING THE POND By CJ Lotz Derry Moore, courtesy of Prestel I don’t think I’ve seen more beautiful trees than these anywhere in the world,” said the British gardening superstar Monty Don, with perfect English earnestness, to the camera as he stepped among the primeval live oaks at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in Charleston, South Carolina, for his 2020 miniseries Monty Don’s American Gardens. For Anglophiles, Montagu Denis Wyatt “Monty” Don carries as much cachet as The Crown or Sherlock, and get him talking about the poetry of plants, and you’ll see why garden enthusiasts the world over nearly collapse at his charms. “Like all poetry, a beautiful garden creeps up on you,” says…

The MOUNTAIN Lodge FOREST SPIRIT A WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA HIDEAWAY WORKS as ONE with ITS SYLVAN SETTING MIKE GRUDOWSKI BRIE WILLIAMS Styling by Rachel Rivers; left: William Abranowicz HOPESPRINGS,A FAMILYHIDEAWAYCRADLED in a patch of mossy Middle-earth forest not far from Brevard, North Carolina, inspires in any number of ways. For starters, consider the leaps of imagination people who know the house well take when they try to describe it. “Swiss Family Robinson meets African safari.” That’s how Day Palmer, the owners’ daughter, recalls her mother envisioning the house long before it existed. “Bali rain hut meets Brevard summer camp” is how Ken Pursley, one of the Charlotte architects who designed the house, puts it, tongue just slightly in cheek. “I wanted kind of Asian/Zen meets North Carolina camp,” says Helen…

Mail-Order Southern Flours Stone-milled goods for home bakers Anson Mills COLUMBIA, SC On a deep-rooted mission to resurrect long-lost grains, Anson Mills spreads the heirloom gospel with goods such as ancient emmer semolina and Abruzzi rye flour. Barton Springs Mill DRIPPING SPRINGS, TX Using an Austrian Osttiroler mill that runs seven days a week, owner James Brown mills buttery Yecora Rojo wheat from Texas, and nutty and sweet Ruby Lee wheat from Oklahoma. DaySpring Farms DANIELSVILLE, GA About twenty miles north of Athens, the Brett family grows, mills, and ships robust Rouge de Bordeaux wheat and Cateto grits and cornmeal, made from sweet orange Brazilian flint corn. Farm & Sparrow MARS HILL, NC David Bauer spent decades researching seeds and now mills and mails malty heirloom Turkey Red wheat, an…

SPORTING Alabama TALK TURKEY When he walks the woods during spring turkey season (March 20–May 2 in most of the state), chef Chris Hastings of Hot and HotFish ClubinBirmingham focuses onthe hunt, but if he sees a patch of tasty mushrooms, he’ll make a mental note and go back later to gather chanterelles or chickens of the woods. His turkey recipe is fairly straightforward: After hanging the bird at room temperature for three days to mellow (something Hastings swears by), he seasons it with olive oil, salt, pepper, and thyme—turkey is delicate, and you can easily step on its flavor, he says. He trims the bird and slices the breast, lightly breads it and fries until crispy, and then layers it over watercress with sautéed mushrooms, foraged if he’s lucky.…

ART Maryland BRANCHING OUT The only certainty about an installation by Patrick Dougherty is that it will be made of sticks. The North Carolina artist, known for his towering natural sculptures, will visit Maryland Hall in Annapolis—an arts center inside a former high school—this spring to construct a massive sculpture alongside a stone labyrinth path. “The space we have chosen has a majestic oak, and since I am a certified tree lover, I look forward to building there under the auspices of such a worthy companion,” says Dougherty, who will work May 3–21, enlisting the help of community volunteers and students from nearby Wiley H. Bates Middle School. The finished piece, made entirely of saplings, should stand for years after its assembly before decomposing. “As I come to know the…

ART South Carolina LOWCOUNTRY LEGEND Alice Ravenel Huger Smith (1876–1958), a leading figure of the Charleston Renaissance, was known for her dreamy watercolors of marsh vistas. But the creative also painted portraits, sketched architectural drawings, and started a local movement of artists dabbling in Japanese woodblock printing inspired by the work of Utagawa Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai. In a new book, Alice: Alice Ravenel Huger Smith, Charleston Renaissance Artist, Smith’s relatives Caroline Palmer and Anne Gaud Tinker and close family friend Dwight McInvaill describe how Smith was an innovator and influencer long before the latter term became trendy with the Instagram set. “She inspired so many of her contemporaries to strive for artistic excellence,” McInvaill says. Her rarely exhibited Japanese-influenced painting Moonlight on the Cooper River, and many more of…

HOTEL Texas WORTH A STAY “When I visit somewhere, I want to feel like I got the vibe and energy of the city,” says the Fort Worth native and entrepreneur Jonathan Morris, who hosts Self Employed, a show on the new Magnolia Network that highlights small-business owners nationwide. Getting the mood of Fort Worth just right was one of the motivations behind the twenty-one-room Hotel Dryce, which opens soon in the city’s booming Cultural District. Along with his business partner, Allen Mederos, Morris carved the hotel out of a former dry-ice factory, turning the once industrial space into a cultural destination of its own, and the work of local makers is a pillar of the property. “We launched a grant program called You Are Here with the nonprofit Art Tooth…