By Bion H. Butler
Enraptured individuals have sung the praises of spring, but it is given to but a limited few of us to see spring when spring arrives in all of its lavish voluptuousness. Spring in those cold climates where the coming of milder days means the escape from the long and dreary experience of winter is worth a cordial welcome, to be sure, but a spring of that kind is merely the recognition of an escape. Spring in some places is more or less of a joyousness in itself, but spring in the Sandhill country is a transformation scene where all the effort is directed toward a splendor of setting that shall be fit for the cheerful rejuvenation.
Nature did a lot for the Sandhills spring, but when J. Van Lindley reached the conclusion that here is a peach country he gave nature the biggest lift that it has ever received from the hand of man in Middle North Carolina. Lindley planted an orchard, and the orchard spread over the neighborhood. But a peach tree is more than a mere fruit tree. It is probably the most cunning bit of work that Nature has designed on a big scale to catch the eye of the bee in its pursuit of honey. And in the past few years, man has massed the effect that Nature commenced in the attempt to attract the bees. From the beginning at the Van Lindley orchards, the peach tree has swept the county. Miles of orchards flank the roads. Pinehurst is a pleasant little island set in a vast sea of peach blossoms at this season of the year. As a floral display, the orchard is a bouquet measured by acres and by miles. When the blossoms are at the flush a glimpse of the country from the rise of a hill looks like a splash of color that has submerged the ridges for miles.
A peach orchard stands alone as a floral display. The peach tree puts out its dense covering of blossoms before it shows any of the green of the leaves. It is a tree that grows naturally in massive form, and the orchard man prunes it to a shape that gives the blossom the best possible opportunity to set a perfect cover. As a result the tree in blossom is a solid block of pink. The flowers are large, while the liberal supply of fertilizer makes them bigger than normal and exceedingly vigorous. So the tree is an unbroken surface of brilliant color. As the orchard man carries on his plantation for the biggest possible production he takes pains to have his stand of trees as near perfect as possible, and his orchard is therefore an unbroken expanse of limb and foliage from one end to the other. Acres succeed acres in which it is almost impossible to distinguish one tree from another. The coloring is a continued solid block. Few spots on earth present such a milage of vivid pink blossoms, packed in such continued density, and few places on earth give such a fine opportunity to look out over a rolling country and see the picture.
It is worth the trip from the North to see the peach blossom show in the North Carolina Sandhills if no other attraction offered at this season. But along with the peach orchards in their prodigal luxury are other things. April is one of the most agreeable seasons of the year in the Sandhills and that means in the whole world. But in April also come some other floral exhibitions. Now the dogwood is supplementing the orchards. All over the Sandhills the sea of big white dogwood blossoms flanks the pink of the orchards. The dogwood as a bloomer is no minor feature, but as it is not massed in such vast acreages it does not strike the eye with such tremendous force as the peach orchards do. The dogwood is usually mixed with the pine trees, and gives variety to the forests, possibly a few acres in a body with the green of the pine tree contrasting with the white and pink of the showy flower. By itself it would be a great feature in the gigantic flower show of the Sandhills, but with the peach orchards in first place the dogwood trees must be content with second. But they add to the charm of a drive along the country roads, and help to make the Sandhills a place worth while to interest people in April. When the peach and dogwood season are better known to the folks of the North, April will be a much more popular time to see the South than it has yet become, and the visitors will extend the period of their stay to cover this most fascinating period of the year. In the course of time, with the better acquaintance with the good roads that now lead from the North to the Sandhill country, a large number of pilgrims will be heading this way for a spring outing. When the road across the mountains to Roanoke in Virginia is completed, which will be the case before long, a great floral excursion will be found out by the northern folks, for after the peach show has closed in the Sandhills, the apple blossom season in the Valley of Virginia and the Shenandoah and the Cumberland Valley of Pennsylvania will in a way imitate the peach blossom carnival in North Carolina. All along that wonderful valley from Roanoke to Harrisburg apple orchards succeed each other in profusion, and they will be in blossom soon after the peach trees of North Carolina have passed their brilliancy. It is doubtful if the United States offers any such spectacle extended over so large an area as this peach and apple blossom flower show that begins here almost at the southern boundary of North Carolina and runs northward all the way to the heart of Pennsylvania.
From page 5 of the Pinehurst Outlook, Saturday, April 19, 1924
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