Mason Farm Biological Reserve

A special 367-acre tract of the Garden, Mason Farm Biological Reserve contains diverse natural plant communities and protected habitats especially valuable for scientific research and teaching. It lies adjacent to the southeast portion of the Garden's Hunt Arboretum. A pond, research support areas (nursery space, field plots, plant propagation beds, animal behavior research station, and greenhouses), and a small teaching observatory of the Department of Physics are located there.

Programs at the Reserve are:

History of the Mason Farm Biological Reserve

The Mason Farm Area was willed to the University in 1894 by Mary Mason, one of the last descendants of the Morgan family, who had settled in this southeast corner of Orange County in the 1740's. Since 1894, the area has remained largely undisturbed. The area has now largely reverted back to woodlands and some of the forests are now at least 150 years old.

Somewhat less "natural"but preserving a fast-disappearing element of the rural Piedmont, several of the historic fields of the Mason Plantation are still kept under cultivation through leases with local farmers; plantin is rotated,however, allowing some fields to lie fallow and begin to enter secondary succession..

Since the 1960's, several portions of this tract were set aside specifically for biological uses by the UNC Board of Trustees, and the Mason Farm Biological Reserve was officially established in 1984. Today the area is administered by the North Caorlina Botanical Garden as both a natural area and biological field station.

Access to the Reserve is available by special permit to researchers, university classes, natural history groups, and the public. Annual permits and maps of the Reserve's farm roads and trails are available at the Totten Center at the Botanical Gardens during weekday hours, 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.

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