February 13, 2025
"Making It Grow" visits Dan Hill, director of Kalmia Gardens in Hartsville, for what he describes as botanical time traveling. The sixty-foot slope behind the Hart House is home to plants that moved from northern areas in front of glaciers during the last ice age and were able to persist in that mini-ecosystem going down to Black Creek. Among these glacial relics are mountain laurels, Kalmia latifolia; and galax, Galax urceolata. Tens of thousands of years separate the mountains laurels on the slope from those in the upland garden area.