Crosby Arboretum has local connections
If a slogan were to be added to the sign on Interstate 59’s Exit 4 approaching Picayune, Mississippi, directing travelers to the adjacent Crosby Arboretum, it should read, “Locally obscure — Nationally famous.”
At least that’s the view of Patricia Drackett, manager of the 104-acre facility that since 1986 has demonstrated the variety of native plant life of the Pearl River Drainage Basin, which includes coastal Mississippi and adjacent St. Tammany and Washington parishes in Louisiana.
“We’ve won so many awards,” said Drackett, who came to the arboretum in 2007 and has been the manager since 2011. “And people from Picayune will tell us that when they travel somewhere folks will tell them they know where Picayune is because of the Crosby.
“But then again, we’ll have people come here for the first time and say ‘Oh my gosh, I had no idea all of this was back here. I wish I had started coming 20 years ago,’ and we wish they had.”
Indeed, when a TV ad promoting Mississippi tourism features the nearby u-pick-em Coastal Ridge Flower Farm instead of the arboretum, maybe you could use some better marketing.
Especially now.
Annual attendance at the Crosby is about 10,000, down from 15,000 a decade ago, although Drackett thinks a few thousand more might sneak in past the unguarded entrance.
With the facility relying on admission (a modest maximum of $5 for adults), membership, sales of plants and wild honey from the four active hives along with gift shop items and donations for everything but salaries of all four full-time staffers (the Mississippi State University Extension Service, which has controlled operations since 1997, has that responsibility), that’s a considerable chunk to raise.
“The university expects us to be self-supporting,” Drackett said. “But they will step up if we need them to.”
Even with that degree of security, however, increased local support is vital, especially since many Picayunians are even confused about the correct pronunciation (It’s “arbor-eat-um,” although when visitors say, “arbor-tor-ium” Drackett doesn’t bother to correct them).
Moreover, most don’t know exactly what an arboretum is. Technically, it’s a botanical collection of trees and shrubs, although the Crosby is less about trees and more about the flowers, grasslands and other plants, including shrubs, native to the area.
That, according to Lynn Gammill, daughter of Mississippi lumber magnate L.O. Crosby Jr., who came up with the idea of donating the land as a living memorial to her father in his hometown following his death in 1978, is as it was intended.
Crosby was a prominent forestry figure and civic leader in Mississippi whose father had developed lumber interests throughout the state and in the early years of the 20th century.
Of L.O. Sr., President Herbert Hoover once said, “That fellow works longer, thinks of more things and gets more things done than any fellow I’ve ever met.”
L.O. Jr. was known as an equally driven man. He also was known for his love of the outdoors.
One of the senior Crosby’s other sons, Robert, migrated to Louisiana where Crosby Resource Management still maintains offices in New Orleans and DeRidder and is a member of the Louisiana Forestry Association.
And while timber barons sometimes might not be identified as conservationists, the Crosby family has long displayed a desire to preserve the local landscape for the betterment of the people. In fact, the arboretum tract was converted to a strawberry farm during the early 1930s when the Depression devastated the lumber industry and jobs in the area were scarce and remnants of the old field roads are visible.
Fortunately, development of the arboretum came at a time when regionalism was big in landscape design. So, if the Crosby isn’t exotic to the area like a Japanese garden or maybe lacks the majestic beauty of a Louisiana cypress swamp, it is what the Crosbys envisioned after consulting landscape and environmental experts from around the country.
“The family is very proud of the Crosby Arboretum and all of the accolades it has received in architecture and design, said Gammill, now 87 and living in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. “But the important thing is teaching people about the importance of our native plants and natural lands.”
Certainly there’s plenty to see and learn.
The mile-long main trail (there are more than two miles of auxiliary paths) takes visitors past grasslands, bogs and the pineywoods that the area is best known for, dotted with pitcher plants, mountain laurels (a refugee from the Ice Age), orchids, sunflowers, pine lilies, irises, duckweeds, water lilies and dozens of other flowers and pioneer shrubs such as buttonbush.
Along with the longleaf and slash pines, there are pawpaw, mayhaw, myrtle, gallberry and blackgum trees (one blackgum in the middle of the savanna area that was scheduled to be cut down was spared by Drackett because, “It’s so pretty I didn’t have the heart to do it,”).
The trails include one bordering a deep-water slough, a pond edge where aquatic plants can be best-observed, one featuring the carnivorous yellow pitcher plant, considered the Crosby’s signature flower, a pinewood/hardwood trail and a loop circling the savanna areas which appear as they would have to the early European settlers.
Others honor Mississippi State naturalist and department head Ross Hutchins, 18th-century naturalist William Bertram who explored the area in the 1770s, Bill Cibula, the scientific advisor at the arboretum’s inception and Ed Blake, the arboretum director from 1984-94. Blake’s master plan and landscape design received awards from the American Society of Landscape Design.
There’s also one trail that explains how the indigenous population and settlers used native plants and one trail for children that introduces them to the ecosystems plus how to howl like a coyote.
The main trails end at the Pinecote Pavilion (“Pinecote” means “pine shelter”), an open gathering place built primarily of indigenous wood designed by Frank Lloyd Wright colleague Fay Jones. The Pinecote is situated alongside a three-acre pond teeming with fish and turtles and is reminiscent of a southern lodge or barn.
“Basically, you’re looking at things in your own backyard,” said Robert Brzusrek, who preceded Drackett, a classmate in their graduate school days in landscape architecture at LSU when they studied under Neil Odenwald, as Crosby’s manager. “The ultimate goal has always been how to best merge humans and nature.”
It’s a fourfold endeavor:
1. Education for youngsters.
The Crosby has long been a destination for local classroom field trips. Budget restrictions in the school system, however, have resulted in the reduction in those outings in recent years. Now it’s mainly homeschoolers and gifted classes that visit.
“It’s an ideal place for field trips,” said Kirsty Nelson, a fourth-grade teacher at Nicholson Elementary School in Picayune. “To be able to get out and see and touch nature instead of just looking at it on a computer would be fantastic.
“But we only get to make one or two trips a year, and the kids would rather go to New Orleans to the zoo or aquarium. We do encourage parents to bring them there, though, and several of them do.”
The big Crosby experience for kids is coming up on Sept. 20-21 — Bugfest, where school groups and the general public can enjoy insect displays, see the pollinator gardens with its butterflies and bees, so vital to the plants, and even walk “The Bat Trail” as darkness falls.
2. Education for adults
As part of its mission under the MSU Extension Service, the Crosby serves as a resource for homeowners looking for the best shrubs, flowers and other plants to populate their lawns.
Many of the shrubs and trees are for sale, pawpaws and mayhaws being among the favorites. It also sells native azaleas because local nurseries don’t usually stock native plants due to their short blooming time and a belief that they won’t sell.
Signs along the trails give helpful tips such as “What to do if your garden has too much shade.” The concept was praised in Journal of the Biology Teacher for its simple concept plus the humor of adding warnings like “Beware of the Honey Island Swamp Monster,” just to make sure folks are paying attention.
To James Henderson, head of the MSU Coastal Research and Extension System which has oversight of the Crosby, it’s more than having nice lawns and gardens.
“We demonstrate how to use native plants for home landscaping that don’t require the irrigation, fertilization or pesticides you might need from other plants,” he said. “That benefits the entire ecosystem.”
3. Research
Along with the main campus, the Crosby family donated more than 700 acres elsewhere in Mississippi where studies such as the best way to maximize cattle grazing in the pineywoods are ongoing.
At the arboretum itself, meaningful research on the best way to conduct prescribed burns in the savannas has proven worthwhile. The studies on prescribed burning have been used by the federal government for national parks and forests.
Additionally, the arboretum provides guidelines for sustainable and low-maintenance gardens and lawns and is an open classroom for Mississippi State students in botany, horticulture and other related areas.
“From the university point of view, the arboretum is a large, outdoor classroom that is a great resource to all citizens,” Henderson said.
4. Recreation
Many visitors, especially those with memberships which provide year-round free admission, come just to enjoy being in nature. There are several benches along the main trail so one doesn’t have to make the entire walk without getting a chance to sit down.
The Pinecote itself is used for group meetings, exhibits, concerts and even funerals.
Along with Bugfest, the Crosby plays host to three other annual events — the Pineywood Heritage Festival in November, a nod to the history of the region featuring local crafters; ForgeDay in January, with its focus on blacksmithing and other iron working; and Strawberries and Cream Day in February, a tribute to the arboretum’s days in the 1930s when it was converted as a strawberry farm. That was because the lumber business played out during the Depression. Free strawberry ice cream, chocolate strawberries and Picayune strawberry lemonade are big draws.
“You get people stepping back into their history and maybe develop an appreciation of what we have here today,” said Barb Medlock, the arboretum’s events coordinator. “At least everybody has a good time.”
Working to keep the Crosby fulfilling all her missions is why Drackett has remained in Picayune for 17 years now and has no intention of leaving.
“Ever since I was a student at LSU, talk about the arboretum has been the talk of the plant world,” said Drackett, who earned a degree in botany at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville and worked in landscape design before coming to the Crosby. “It’s been a wonderful chance to get in front of people and pass along the knowledge you’ve been able to acquire.
“I’ve heard that if you feel like every day you go to work you have a mission, you’re in the minority and that can be a wonderfully rewarding thing.”
And to Drackett, her mission isn’t completed.
Despite it going on 40 years since its opening, the Crosby’s master plan has yet to be completed, most notably the construction of a visitor’s center to replace the trailer that houses the offices and gift shop.
On Drackett’s personal wish list is the installation of larger signs along the trails, telling visitors more of the Crosby’s history along with detailed information on the plants including digital coding. She’d also like to have an outreach person to work with the schools to bring back the field trips.
That’s because most of all, she’d like to see more visitors.
“We’ve had folks show up and ask where the arboretum is because they didn’t know exactly what they were looking for,” she said. “And we just tell them, ‘Well, you’re standing on it,’ ”
(Ted Lewis is a retired writer for The Times Picayune in New Orleans.)
The Crosby Arboretum is located at 370 Ridge Road, Picayune, Mississippi, and is open Wednesday to Sunday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors/military, and $2 for children under 12.
(601) 799-2311; crosbyarboretum.com
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