February 2022
TIME TO GET READY FOR THE
SUMMER GARDEN At Home with
CHRISTINA BUTLER a Charleston City Paper publication
WHAT
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OWADA YS?
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Volume 2, Number 7
Feb. 9, 2022
Digs, our monthly home-focused publication, connects the people who make the Lowcountry special with content they’ve been missing. Digs gets up close and personal with stories on local personalities, home design and remodeling, plants and gardening, home repair and real estate. To learn more about advertising opportunities offered through Digs, contact our advertising team at (843) 577-5304 or send an email to: sales@charlestoncitypaper.com. Dig it!
INSIDE DIGGING YOUR FOOD
Time to get ready for the summer garden by Andy Brack AT HOME IN THE LOWCOUNTRY
Christina Butler does things the right way by Andy Brack
Digs 02.09.2022 18
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DIGGING LOCAL
What does it mean these days to be a native plant? by Toni Reale
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PUBLISHER
EDITOR
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Andy Brack
Herb Frazier
Toni Reale
Published by City Paper Publishing, LLC Members: J. Edward Bell | Andrew C. Brack Views expressed in Charleston City Paper cover the spectrum and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. Charleston City Paper takes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts. © 2022. All content is copyrighted and the property of City Paper Publishing, LLC. Material may not be reproduced without permission. Proud member of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and the South Carolina Press Association. ADVERTISING INQUIRIES: sales@charlestoncitypaper.com For staff email addresses, visit us online.
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RESIDENTIAL & COMMERCIAL ELECTRICIAN Digs over time | Repair Additions Installations Ceiling Fans Panel Updgrades
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Since 2020, we’ve profiled a diverse, interesting array of Charleston-area residents. Here’s a review in case you missed any of them — or want to read them again. To find their stories online, search at CharlestonCityPaper.com.
August 2020....................................Scott Newitt September 2020...........................Quiana Parler October 2020.........................Ben D’Allesandro November 2020.................................Jill Mathias December 2020..............................Lisa Thomas January 2021............................ Kylon Middleton February 2021................................ Raul Sanchez March 2021.....................Kathleen Hay Hagood April 2021................................................. Tyler Hill
May 2021.........................................Cara Leepson June 2021.......................Nina Sossamon-Pogue July 2021......................... Jim Voigt, “The Critic” August 2021.............................. Gervais Hagerty September 2021.........................Michelle Mapp October 2021................................. Bobby Shealy November 2021............................Sean Hawkins December 2021................... Maryam Ghaznavi January 2022 ....................... Jonathan Sanchez
DIGGING YOUR FOOD
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Time to get ready for the summer garden If you want to test whether you have a green thumb for growing delicious food in a home garden, it’s time to start planning and planting — if you haven’t already. South Carolinians are blessed to have a mild climate in which fresh vegetables grow abundantly and provide tables with barrowloads of fresh, healthy food. Not only can vegetable gardening be a fun hobby, but home-grown produce can help families to keep down rising food costs. Experts at Clemson Cooperative Extension say the number of home vegetable gardens are increasing across the Palmetto State. “Success or failure of home vegetable production can depend on many things, but some major reasons for failure are negligence, not following the proper instructions and not keeping up with current vegetable developments,” according to the service’s Home & Garden
Information Center. In planning a garden, Clemson Extension suggests several tips for success: • Write it down. Plan a garden first on paper and include who will do the work and food that your family likes to eat. Make sure there’s enough space to grow what you want to grow. “Remember that a small weed-free garden will produce more than a large, weedy mess.” • Order seeds by February. Some plants may be started early inside. • Consider sun and shade. If you are growing beans or other vegetables that require trellises, put the structures on the north side of the garden so they won’t shade other parts. • Arrange plants. Group plants by the length of the growing period, by planting spring crops together to allow later-producing crops to grow in those places after the early crops are harvested.
• Planting time. Make sure to consider a plant’s cold-hardiness when planting. Follow directions for the Lowcountry’s climate that are on seed packs. Check Clemson Cooperative Extension’s exhaustive list of factsheets to learn more about how to grow specific crops. • Use old City Papers. You can line your garden with newspaper to control weeds. Just top two or three sheets of newsprint with a layer of pine needles, grass clippings or dried leaves for an eco-friendly and inexpensive weed barrier. For more tips, visit elivingtoday.com.
Planting schedule
Here is a general list of when you can start planting various vegetables and plants in your garden. You usually have 30 days to 45 days to get your plants into the ground in the Lowcountry, but for specific plants and recommendations,
check online with Clemson Cooperative Extension. Feb. 1: Asparagus, cabbage, carrots, collards, kale, leeks, lettuce, mustard, onions, garden peas, white potatoes, radishes, rutabagas, spinach and turnips. March 1: Broccoli, cauliflower, sweet corn and tomato. March 15: Cantaloupe, cucumber, honeydew and summer squash. April 1: Pole beans, eggplant, peanuts, Southern peas, peppers and watermelon. April 15: Lima beans, edible soybeans (edamame) and sweet potatoes. May 1: Okra. Family Features contributed to this story.
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By Andy Brack
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AT HOME IN THE LOWCOUNTRY
Christina Butler does things the right way By Andy Brack
Christina Butler is a preservation badass. She writes about historic preservation. She teaches it. She renovates. And she lives in a modern home built to feel like something a skilled Charleston tradesman would have lived in 250 years ago.
Digs 02.09.2022
“This house is what happens when two history nerds find each other,” she said while outlining the history of the home that her historian husband, Nic Butler, designed and she directed during construction. “We did the flooring, trim, painting, tile work, cabinetry, hung all of the doors and worked on some of the exterior.” They decided to build a home that a 1750s craftsman would have had because they love the history and style associated with the Georgian era. “It’s a time where everything was handcrafted,” she said. “The minimalism of that period really makes the craftsmanship pop.” From the time she was three, Christina Butler knew she wanted to build things. “It’s in my blood.” She remembers watching the PBS show This Old House with Bob Vila as a toddler. “My dad had it on, and I was enthralled.” He later videotaped shows so she could re-watch episodes. In her native Ohio, Butler went to trade school, instead of traditional high school, to learn to build stuff. She started college to learn civil engineering, but something wasn’t right. Then on a vaca-
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Butler uses vintage tools to handcraft woodwork in her home. Hand tools fill Butler’s workshop.
Bright colors
The Butlers’ dark blue East Side home on Hampden Court is a three-bedroom, 1,482 square-foot rectangular box with two floors and an unfinished ground level that serves as a workshop and provides storage. The first living floor of the single house includes a front sitting room offset by a stairwell, a dining room and a kitchen in the rear. Upstairs are three bedrooms and a bathroom. Period pieces of furniture, mostly faithful reproductions, give the place the feel of an old home. But what’s striking is the brightly colored trim that surrounds each room. Walls are white, because paint was expensive in the 1750s. “What was typical in the middle 18th century was to leave the wall plaster white and put the paint on the trim,” she said. “The aesthetic with the white walls and bright trim would have been a middle-class tradesperson’s house.” Often carpenters, like Butler, would have trim at the ceiling because they had access to the wood and could add it easily, she said. The Butlers’ kitchen features a bright yellow door and trim. The living room has trim painted a coffee-milk tan. Both colors are mineral-based. The original pigment for blue, the color of the outside of the home, may have come from lapis, while the bedroom’s bright red trim — dragon’s blood red — likely stemmed from iron oxide. “People think of 18th century colors as really drab,
THE LOWDOWN ON CHRISTINA BUTLER Age: “A lady over 20 never tells …” Birthplace: Concord, Ohio. Education: Trade school for construction/carpentry; bachelor’s degree in historic preservation; master’s degree in American history. Current profession: College professor, preservation consultant and barn hand (on my days off). Family: Husband, Nic, and parents, Dave and Rita. Pet: Bertie Wooster, a 6-year-old rescue pit mix. Photos by Andy Brack
These jelly cups would have been used more than two centuries ago. but before the sun bleached them, they were really popping colors,” Butler said.
Keeping busy
Since moving into the home in 2015, Butler has kept busy with lots of projects. “I built traditional shutters for every window outside,” she said. “That took forever because I used hand tools.” Over time, she plans to add more trim to rooms in the house and add art that’s reflective of the Georgian period. Some of the work will be done in the ground-level workshop, a place filled with old planes, clamps, saws and augers. When asked whether the workshop would have been authentic, Butler admitted it was about a foot higher than it might have been 250 years ago, but the house would have been raised then — because Charleston floods. “You wouldn’t finish that space because it would flood. It’s Charleston.” Butler should know. In 2020, she literally wrote the 288-page book on the history of Charleston flooding. Published by the University of South Carolina Press, Lowcountry at High Tide: A History of Flooding, Drainage, and Reclamation in Charleston, South Carolina is a reminder that Charleston has always been vulnerable to flooding and, in the days of rising sea levels, now faces a major threat. In a review, Martha Zierden, curator of historical archeology at The Charleston Museum, wrote, “Christina Butler describes a growing but low-lying city where the ground surface was constantly in flux. The filling and draining that characterized Charleston from its earliest days had both short-term and long-range consequences for the livability of the peninsula, and for the archeological record of these processes. Some may surprise you.” When asked about lessons learned from building a 1750s-style house in 2015, Butler offered this, which applies to public policy as much as it does a home: “You get what you pay for. When you cut corners and do things cheaply, it will cost you in the long run. You use garbage for fill (material), it’s going to sink. My dad always said, ‘There’s the cheap way and the right way.’ ”
A podcasting center is in an upstairs room.
It’s pretty obvious which one Christina Butler is going to keep doing.
Something people would be surprised to learn about you: I can drive mule teams. Favorite thing to do outside of work: Write about history and travel. Your passions: History, old buildings and horses. Books on bedside table: Feast of All Saints and a new biography of St. Therese. Favorite novel: Pride and Prejudice. Favorite book as a child: The Little Princess; Anne Rice books as a teen. Something that you have too much of at home: Books. Secret vice: Eating almost any food placed in front of me. Guilty pleasure: Binge-watching Death in Paradise or a good documentary series. Favorite foods: Cheese, bean burgers, vegan pad thai and blaa (Irish bread). Favorite cocktail or beverage: Irish whiskey neat, followed by coffee. Five foods you always need in your refrigerator: Cheese, grapeseed mayo, berries, coffee smoothies and leftovers for when we’re too busy to cook. Three people (alive or dead) you’d like to dine with: Inigo Jones, St. Peter and Jane Austen. What meal would you want served to you for your last supper: Really good fish and chips or dinner at the Old Couch Cafe in Waterford, Ireland. Describe your best day in 50 words or less: A day with Bertie and Nic writing at home, followed by a long walk in historic Charleston and finished with a great takeaway dinner from Bar Mash or Barsa and a good beer. Pet peeve: Arrogance, ignorance and conflating googling something with ‘doing research.’ Philosophy: Follow your passions, and learn from history Your advice for someone new to Charleston: Learn about flooding and traffic patterns before buying a house.
charlestoncitypaper.com
tion to Charleston, she stumbled upon a historic preservation program at the College of Charleston and knew she had found a place to attend college. She dumped civil engineering and moved here. And she hasn’t really looked back. In the years since, she worked at a local library, became friends with Nic (now the library’s popular historian) and later got married. In between, she got a master’s degree in American history, worked in construction, started a restoration company and did some serious preservation consulting. When the American College of Building Arts asked her to teach historic preservation, she was in heaven. “It’s fun to teach at a program that I would have gone to had it existed,” she said recently. “I’m teaching to my tribe.” Now a professor, she’s so enthusiastic that she admits she might have bitten off a little too much this semester. She’s teaching three sections of historic preservation to sophomores, two sections of something else to freshmen, one senior capstone class and a section of the introduction to historic preservation at the College of Charleston. (Yep, that’s seven classes.)
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DIGGING LOCAL
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What does it mean these days to be a native plant? By Toni Reale, special to Digs A native plant is one that evolved over thousands of years in a particular region, introduced without human intervention, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As native plant species evolved, so did native insects and wildlife, which rely on these plant communities for food and shelter. This preserves the balance of the native ecosystem, according to the South Carolina Native Plant Society. For North America, only plants thriving in the United States prior to European takeover are considered native. On a regional scale, any plant that appears to naturalize (has migrated naturally without Reale human intervention) in a new region would be considered non-native and some could be considered invasive, although not all non-native species are considered invasive. This original definition, however, was first agreed upon by conservation biologists in a time when climate was less understood and considered unchanging.
Digs 02.09.2022
CRAZY: ABOUT PATSY CLINE
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Human intervention could prevent extinction
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But some are challenging that today. Dov Sax, a researcher at Brown University, suggests a “more nuanced set of terms other than native and non-native” is necessary given the rapid shifts in ecological regimes due to climate change. A quick study of United States historical plant hardiness zones from the Arbor Day Foundation shows a dramatic change from 1990 to 2015, with warmer zones pushing northward. The shifting zones correlate with a northward shift in plant and animal communities potentially replacing or competing with others typically considered native. So the question is, if the naturalized species thrive in the current conditions, should it now be considered a native species? Why does this matter? The definition of “native” is important because currently only those plants deemed native to a specific region are written into conservation legislation as those worthy of protection. As the climate changes and species naturalize into new areas that suit them for optimal growth and survival, would they be less deserving of protection? Plant species migration is a slow process as they are not able to crawl or fly their way out of unsuitable conditions. Their rate of migration matters, as so many animal species rely on these plants for survival. There is already documented evidence of birds migrating to areas where the berries weren’t ready yet. The changes in ecological regimes and food availability can be detrimental to species both plant and animal and inevitably lead to extinction of species not able to keep up with change.
The Flame Azalea is just one of the many plant species native to South Carolina.
A hot-topic in conservation right now to mitigate extinction is the idea of “assisted colonization,” in which plant species would be colonized in new regions outside of their native ranges that suit their optimal growing conditions. Researchers at prominent institutions in New England are reviewing all aspects of this debate including the pros and cons of relocation along with which plants would be good candidates for this conservation strategy.
Differences between 1990 USDA and 2015 Arborday.org hardiness zones
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After USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map, USDA Misc. Publication No. 1475, issued January 1990
Arbor Day Foundation Plant Hardiness Zone Map, published 2015
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There are definite concerns with ensuring that any relocated species would not become invasive or hybridize native plant species out of existence. The researchers found that many native species in New England might be more resilient to immediate climate change because their habitat ranges are so broad, however, many southern species would be extremely vulnerable to extinction because their native ranges are small. Conservationists will need to grapple with the benefits and risks of accepting a new definition of native, and how to mitigate extinction due to habitat loss and fragmentation from human development and climate change. The hope is that the scientific community can quickly come to a consensus and to educate lawmakers so that we can possibly aid in the continuation of climate-threatened species.
A geologic perspective
In the not so distant past, flora and fauna were markedly different than they are
today. During the last ice age (which ended about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago), mammoths, mastodons, giant ground sloths and saber tooth cats roamed the Lowcountry. The flora during that time would have been largely unrecognizable to what lives here today. Climates shift, habitats change and when we think about what it means to be native in this longer geologic context, perhaps those species migrating north are just returning home again. However, we should consider the influence of human activity on current warming and whether we are willing to let species go extinct on our account or help them thrive in ever changing conditions. Toni Reale is the owner and creator director of Roadside Blooms, a unique flower and plant shop in Park Circle in North Charleston. It specializes in weddings, events and everyday deliveries using near 100 percent Americanand locally-grown blooms. Online at: www. roadsideblooms.com. Visit at 4610 Spruill Avenue, Suite 102, North Charleston.
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Courtesy Arbor Day Foundation
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