The fall series of Evening Programs from Seabrook Island Natural History Group (SINHG) begins on Thursday, September 8 with “South Carolina Tea Plantations: A History,” with horticulturalist Joshua Giordano-Silliman, former manager of Charleston Tea Garden on Wadmalaw Island. Silliman now serves as CEO of his own HortiFire agricultural and landscape consulting firm, based in Summerville.
Summerville is where the tea plant Camellia sinensis was first successfully cultivated in America in marketable quantities in the late 19th century, although efforts had been underway since the plant first arrived in America in the early 18th century with British colonists. The tea plants at Charleston Tea Garden are descendants of those first Summerville plantings.
SINHG’s fall series of Evening Programs will continue in October with “A History of James Island”, on October 13, and in November with “Lost Charleston” on November 10. All Evening Programs begin at 7:30 pm at The Lake House. Registration for the Evening Programs is available at sinhg.org/events-page.
To find out more about the Seabrook Island Natural History Group, click here.
-Submitted by Norm Powers, for SINHG
(Photo credit: Charleston Tea Garden)