Editor’s Note: “Time for Some Good News” is a feature that spotlights the good deeds, great people and positive stories in the landscaping industry. If you have your own good news to share, reach out to Seth Jones at sjones@northcoastmedia.net or Scott Hollister at shollister@northcoastmedia.net.
The Salvation Army Red Shield Youth Center sits at the corner of a busy downtown intersection in Durham, N.C. For the youth who attend after-school and summer camp there, there is little buffer between them and the cars belching exhaust and noise; just a few trees and a parking lot.
Decades of construction and hardscaping have left this corner of the city stripped of life. What is left is compacted, exhausted dirt, with almost no habitat for wildlife and little for children to explore.
Leaf and Limb, a regenerative tree and land care company located in North Carolina, is helping change that. Around the perimeter of the building, they are planting a privacy thicket, a selection of native trees and a meadow, also known as a Piedmont Prairie. It will transform a bare space with limited places to play or learn into a lush landscape that is full of life.
The installation includes the 5,500-square-foot Piedmont Prairie that wraps around the corner of the property facing the road, a 700-square-foot privacy thicket screening nearby apartments and a diverse mix of native trees and shrubs, such as Southern wax myrtle, white fringetree and Virginia sweetspire.
“This planting project will do more than beautify our space — it will give our children a living classroom,” says Joshua Dorsette, the director of the center. “As they watch these trees and flowers grow, they’ll learn about stewardship, resilience and the power of nurturing something beyond themselves. It’s a gift that will shape their environment and their outlook for years to come.”
And the children truly will have the chance to watch this transformation unfold over time. Piedmont Prairies take three years to establish, and while the trees and shrubs that make up the native thickets grow quickly, they will naturally evolve. What these plantings require in patience, they repay in resilience. Privacy thickets need only occasional pruning, and Piedmont Prairies are cut back just once a year.
Despite minimal maintenance, these areas feed pollinators, rebuild soil, store carbon, reduce stormwater runoff and restore habitat, all without fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides or irrigation.
Bringing this project to life would not have been possible without the partnership of the North Carolina Wildlife Federation (NCWF), a nonprofit dedicated to protecting, conserving and restoring wildlife habitat across the state. Through its Butterfly Highway initiative, NCWF supports the creation of native pollinator habitats in places affected by urbanization, recognizing that sites like the Red Shield Youth Center serve as critical stepping-stones that reconnect fragmented ecosystems. NCWF secured grant funding for the installation, with Leaf and Limb leading the planning and installation process.
“We believe true conservation happens through collaboration,” said Kate Griner, vice president of philanthropy and communications at NCWF. “Partnering with Leaf and Limb to restore Piedmont Prairies allows us to do far more for wildlife than we could alone. Through the philanthropic support we’re able to mobilize, these restoration projects bring native habitats back to life — benefiting wildlife, people and the communities that share these landscapes.”
This project also reflects a broader shift in how we care for land, a movement that Basil Camu, co-founder of Leaf and Limb, outlines in his book “From Wasteland to Wonder.”
“When we plant native species, rebuild soil and work with nature instead of against it, we help transform damaged spaces into places that are teeming with beauty and life,” he says. “These small acts, repeated across our communities right where we live, support a movement aimed at helping heal Earth.”
Together, these partners are transforming a once-overlooked corner of Durham into a thriving, resilient landscape for the kids to learn from.
