By Emma Castleberry
Kelly Holdbrooks, executive director of the nonprofit Southern Highlands Reserve, has dedicated her career to conserving one of the most biologically rich and threatened ecosystems in the country: the southern Blue Ridge Mountains. The Southern Highlands Reserve is a 120-acre private botanical garden and research center that specializes in protecting endangered plant species and preparing landscapes to adapt to a changing climate. “I love being a part of educating the public about the importance of native plants and the ecosystems,” says Holdbrooks.
Situated at 4,500 feet elevation on the Blue Ridge Escarpment, the Reserve faces unique environmental challenges, including 80 to 130 inches of rain annually. “We’re very used to intense storm events,” says Holdbrooks, “and over the last 15 years, they have astronomically increased in their intensity due to climate change.”
Kelly Holdbrooks. Photo courtesy of Southern Highlands Reserve
The Reserve implements a careful approach to manage these risks, including stormwater mitigation efforts, canopy relief and a thorough arbor care program. “We’ve just been applying different best management practices, and between Fred and Helene, we weathered both of those storms with just minor blowouts that took maybe a day to fix,” says Holdbrooks.
A core focus of Kelly’s leadership at Southern Highlands Reserve has been the red spruce propagation program, a part of the Southern Appalachian Spruce Restoration Initiative (SASRI), a collaborative effort with the US Forest Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the Nature Conservancy and other conservation partners. The red spruce tree, once prevalent across the southern Appalachians, is crucial to the survival of the region’s rare spruce-fir forests, one of the most endangered ecosystems in the United States. “We propagate all of the red spruce trees that get planted on public land,” says Holdbrooks. The Reserve’s program has already planted more than 6,000 trees with a goal of planting hundreds of thousands. “We’re just getting started, but we have a 90 percent success rate on our plantings in the wild,” says Holdbrooks. “That gives me hope that we’re going to be able to restore the spruce-fir forest.”
Education is another vital component of Holdbrooks’ vision for the Reserve. “There is a key component of education that gardens play in the public realm and I think we’ve kind of lost that a little bit as we’ve jumped into this century,” she says. “My hope is that Southern Highlands Reserve and all the other gardens that we partner with can play a bigger role in public education.”
A newly built greenhouse, realized with the help of $2.2 million in grants and donations, will allow the Reserve to increase the scale of its red spruce propagation efforts exponentially, and also grow native plants for other restoration projects. “It will be a big component of the conservation education we provide,” says Holdbrooks, “as visitors will be able to see first-hand how to implement green stormwater mitigation with systems that feed into our rain garden and mountain bog.” The Reserve is still fundraising for this project, with $500,000 still needed to meet its goal.
Holdbrooks’ work recently earned her recognition from Garden & Gun as a 2024 Champion of Conservation. “It is one of my wildest dreams to be doing this work,” she says, “and then to be recognized is just an incredible honor.”
The ecological and intrinsic importance of the southern Blue Ridge Mountains is at the core of Holdbrooks’ personal and professional drive. “Other than the Amazon, we are the most biologically diverse area on the planet,” she says. “That’s a pretty big deal. All of us self-select to be here for lots of reasons, but I think the natural environment is sort of baked into who we are in our DNA and we’re drawn to it. I want to find ways to help conserve this area and the species that inhabit it.”
Learn more at SouthernHighlandsReserve.org.
