The Crosby Arboretum: A Sustainable Regional Landscape

6: The Major Exhibits of Pinecote

75 6 THE MAJOR EXHIBITS OF PINECOTE Design must serve as bridge between the perception of fact and emotive response. —Edward L. Blake Jr., personal notebooks, 1986 As Pinecote’s infrastructure was being refined in the arboretum’s Master Plan, botanist Chris Wells continued to hone the plant community exhibit structure . To guide the plantings at the arboretum grounds, he devised descriptions for each of the plant community exhibits and compiled a list of plant species that occurred there or are typically found within that community. This list allowed arboretum managers opportunities to add interest and variety to the visitor’s experience and became the guidelines for planting new species. The following is a description of the major Master Plan exhibits. THE SAVANNA EXHIBIT The decision to keep the eastern third of the facility at the main entrance in grassland presented visitors with a glimpse of the region’s predominant historical landscape scene: the pine savanna. Since the 1940s, the entire arboretum property had been maintained as a pine plantation and regularly burned; thus the Savanna Exhibit was already in place. The linear nature of Pinecote’s configuration offered a savanna view down the entire length of the arboretum, nearly half a mile. Historically, and 76 | The Crosby Arboretum on larger natural area tracts, savannas offer long vistas in many directions. But for a smaller site such as Pinecote, taking advantage of the arboretum’s vertical axis was the best opportunity for visitors to experience an extensive visual prospect. Blake manipulated the edges of the Savanna Exhibit to be wide in portions (such as at the Pitcher Plant Bog Exhibit) and narrow in others. This wavy form allowed visitors to experience the breadth of a grassland and have the feeling of being in a large grassy sea. The narrow portions of the savanna, sometimes less than one hundred feet wide, pinch in the open space and carve the Savanna Exhibit into a series of outdoor rooms. This variety of spatial forms creates interest as one walks along the length of the exhibit. The arboretum’s thirty-year management as a pine plantation allowed the savanna grassland to heal from the rutted impacts of the Strawberry Farm days. Fire-adapted herbaceous species typically found in savannas regained foothold, and though the site was not high in species diversity, the exhibit area already somewhat resembled a typical pine savanna assemblage. Grasses, sedges, wildflowers, and sundews (Drosera spp.) Early morning in the Savanna Exhibit. Photo by Ed Blake Jr., courtesy of Marilyn Blake The Major Exhibits of Pinecote | 77 were in plentiful supply. Woody shrubs dominated the Savanna Exhibit when arboretum managers first began to work with it, and after intensive prescribed fire management had reduced the shrub dominance, the savanna featured more grasses and herbs once again. Fortunately, the site’s historic fire management had suppressed invasive exotic woody species that otherwise would have presented more extensive challenges. The use of prescribed fire to maintain exhibits was not common in the world of arboreta , except at facilities such as the University of Wisconsin Arboretum. Forestry managers use fire as a tool to enhance pine forest production, but such practices are rarely seen in botanic gardens. Leslie Sauer from Andropogon Associates wrote about Crosby’s use of fire management: “Using innovative technologies such as prescribed burning, the Arboretum is pioneering the management of southeastern coastal plain landscapes in a gardenesque setting. This applied research as well as the growing collection of indigenous plants that is fully documented and monitored will be invaluable in the effort to restore local ecosystems and to develop a regionally appropriate landscape vocabulary.”1 The Savanna Exhibit just after a prescribed burn. Photo by Ed Blake Jr., courtesy of Marilyn Blake 78 | The Crosby Arboretum In the early days, the arboretum utilized fire crews and equipment from the Crosby family’s lumber operations. As a result, the fire management practices tended to mimic those used in local forestry applications. Burning typically would occur in the winter months when it was cooler for the workers and wind direction was steady. But south Mississippi land managers were well versed in the application of prescribed fire, and studies of its use in the landscape can be traced to the 1930s. Bill Platt, a fire ecologist at Louisiana State University, was knowledgeable in the historical fire records of the Deep South and was an early consultant to the Crosby Arboretum. Platt...