Ridge Demonstration Garden:
Plants in the Garden
Long Leaf Pine
Cherokees historically lived in the longleaf pine forests and used these trees as a wood resource. However, the Cherokee tribe was forcibly removed from this region by the US government in the mid-1800s. The longleaf pine was the dominant tree over 60 million acres of the Southeast. But Longleaf pine communities have been reduced to about 3 percent of their original area due to logging, grazing lands, and urban development. Most buildings built in the southern U.S. from the 1800s contained longleaf pine wood including those built by the Cherokee. The wood of the pines was also used in making canoes, frames for skin boats or rafts and for bows. The canoes were made of logs of large pines. They were hollowed out with fire and scraped and chipped away with stone hatchets. Longleaf pines were used for torches for fishing and hunting at night, as fuelwood for heating and cooking, and village streets were paved with pine bark. The wood of the tree is very strong and grows up to 120 feet tall with a rounded crown. The orange-brown trunk is straight, up to 30 inches in diameter with a very long taproot. When the trees are first planted, they resemble a clump of grass until their root system develops, which is approximately five years. Pines were considered by the Cherokee to have eternal lives, so the smoke from burning branches was used to purify a home if a death had occurred there. Cherokee medicine men made a solution from the tops of the pines that was drunk by someone needing relief from the pain caused by the intrusion of a foreign object such as an arrow.
This past year the Floyd County Master Gardener Extension Volunteers planted several longleaf pines along the bank leading down to the river to reestablish a stand in honor of the Cherokee tribe. The distribution of Longleaf pine (Pinus palustrus) in Floyd County is at the edge of the species’ northern range in Georgia. Northern sources (provenances) from here and North Alabama have been termed “Montane” or Mountain LLP. The trees planted at Chieftains are from this source. Come by the museum to see the new installation of these majestic pines in their grasslike state!
-Article written by Tracy Condon for April 2025 Ridge Report
Yaupon Holly
In February of 2016, the Rome News-Tribune reported that three Yaupon Holly shrubs were planted in the demonstration garden at the museum. These shrubs remain to be an integral and cherished part of the garden in 2025.
Yaupon holly leaves were used by indigenous tribes in teas for medicinal purposes as well as ceremonial and purification rituals. The tea, when brewed into a very strong black drink was used in ceremonies and often caused vomiting, either due to some additive or just the sheer volume consumed during the ceremony. The Latin name for Yaupon Holly is Ilex Vomitoria, which comes from this notion that the tea from this holly caused vomiting. Records from the National Park Service do show the yaupon holly or Ilex Vomitoria was most likely part of the Ridge property. The holly is one of the only caffeine producing plants native to North America and was widely used for teas.
Yaupon hollies grow from ten to twenty feet tall and eight to twelve feet wide making them a good choice for privacy screens in the home landscape. They prefer full sun but will tolerate partial shade and loamy, sandy, or clay soil, which makes them a good plant for the demonstration garden along the sandy banks of the river.
-Article from March 2025 Ridge Report
