Buxton Books is excited to be the booksellers for the Charleston Horticulture Society’s October Talk featuring Virginia Beach.

About Virginia Beach:

Virginia Beach writes for numerous publications on the subjects of plantation history and land conservation. She has served on the staffs of The Nature Conservancy, the Lowcountry Land Trust and the South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium, as well as on the national editorial board of Saving Land. A native of Richmond, she earned a B.A. in English from the University of Virginia and served for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in East Africa.

Virginia’s first book, Medway, a history of a Cooper River rice plantation was followed by Rice & Ducks: The Surprising Convergence that Saved the Carolina Lowcountry. It chronicles the land conservation movement of Lowcountry South Carolina and won the 2015 Independent Publisher’s gold medal for best southeastern nonfiction. Virginia and her husband, Dana Beach – who founded the Coastal Conservation League in 1989 – are avid birders and nature enthusiasts, having lived in Charleston for nearly four decades and raised their two children there. In 2019, they collaborated to write a history of the Conservation League titled, A Wholly Admirable Thing: Defending Nature and Community on the South Carolina Coast.

About American Landmark:

Home of a  Declaration signer and a First Continental Congress president, Middleton  Place also was the residence for hundreds of enslaved men, women and  children. As the new man in charge, Duell’s challenge was to preserve  the history contained in the houses and lands of his forebears, while  also making them sustainable, relevant and accessible for future  generations of all Americans. Affirming Ralph Waldo Emerson’s thesis  that ‘there is properly no history, only biography,’ American Landmark weaves  together myriad biographical stories, introducing the reader to an  array of protagonists — both White and Black — who shaped this iconic  place and were shaped by it.

For more information please visit The Charleston Horticulture Society’s website!