As you leave the parking areas, you'll enter the forest across from the livestock barns and enjoy walking along high and dry trails that wind down toward the pond. A short walk will take you on a return trip up the sandy road towards the house.  A longer walk will take you across the dam to double back through the woods along the outflow stream and return along the sandy run.

In this satellite photo, you can see the sandy road that leads to the pond.  Careful eyes can glimpse the return road that runs through the woods and exits into the main parking lot near the house.  A wooden walkway built across the pond, and connects with walking trails on both sides, to complete a loop across the dam, through the woods, across the bridge, and through the woods once again to join the main loop.

This map shows the features and location of the trail.

here is a wide range of 'woods' here. Near the main house and along the sandy road that leads to the pond is an old-growth mixed longleaf

New forest - fields that were once planted in soybeans, peanuts or corn lay unused, and have begun an orderly and predictable journey through a succession of growth, from broom sedge and small herbaceous plants to broom sedge with woody plants that include cedar, pines, hawthorns, oaks.

The fast-growing pines will dominate and eventually be replaced by hardwoods and the climax forest is likely to be mixed deciduous with mature longleaf pines 

Bottomlands - Scotts Hill creek runs through the property, and was dammed about 150 years ago. There is a pond of approximately 10 acres and the water power from the pond once turned a set of millstones to grind grain.  The outflow of the creek flows into Foy Creek on the south side of Scotts Hill Loop Road, and then joins Futch Creek further on.

The principal tree around the pond is cypress, and along the creek are numerous old and large cypress trees.  The old forest is along the top of a sandy ridge and is quite dry with its own set of plant and animal life particular to dryland forests.

The wetland forest is naturally different with another set of unique plants.  Anybody ought to be able to recognize a wetland when they see one - right?  But, is it a wetland? Or is it merely wet land?  The obvious wetlands at Poplar Grove are more aptly called 'bottomlands' because they're in the flood plain alongside the creek that runs through the property.

This area of the coast is unique.  The elevation along the land that lies back of and along the Intracoastal Waterway, a high berm - varies between approximately 15 and 30 feet above sea level.  The further inland one travels, the less the elevation, so that 15 or 20 miles inland, the high ground is likely to be only 10 feet or less above sea level.

The low land behind the coastal ridge is characteristic of a 'pocosin' or 'Carolina Bay' - sandy and dry areas containing many elliptical peat bogs, with each type having its own forms of plant life. Wiregrass savannas and mixed longleaf pine and hardwoods give way to bogs plants and pocosin pines.

Poplar Grove lies along the crest of the coastal ridge, the high ground that made foot and wagon travel dry and reliable in the early days coincide with the route of present day Highway 17.

Sphagnum Moss - What's the difference between peat moss and sphagnum moss? They are the same thing - sphagnum moss when it's live, peat moss when it's dead. In a bog, live sphagnum moss grows on the surface of large deposits of dead moss.

Peat moss is mined by scraping away the top layer of living moss plants, and the layers of dead plants are dug out and dried. Really old peat moss bogs have compressed over time into peat, which is sufficiently dense, once cut out of the bog and dried, to be used as fuel.  Even older peat, compressed over even longer periods of time, is transformed into soft coal.

When southern farm fields were depleted of thin nutrients with intensive cotton farming, Mr. Foy implemented the recent discovery by Booker T. Washington that growing peanuts would restore the health of cropped-out farm fields. The Poplar Grove Plantation was prosperous during the time when most Southern farmers were facing economic hard times due to declining crop yields as well as declining cotton prices. 

Fields are often not farmed continuously, but allowed to rest, a 'fallow' period.  Sometimes, for whatever reasons, fields are not returned to productive status, and are said to be 'abandoned' - not from ownership, but from agricultural use.

Below is a field that was once planted in peanuts, but is now in the early middle stages of plant succession. The grassy field is populated with pines, young oaks, and red cedars. 

The "Abbey Nature Preserve"  is full of beautiful trees, plants, flowers and wildlife.  It is an experience in itself just to walk through.