High Point Friends School - Campus

Campus

The South Woods adjacent to High Point Friends School is a rare surviving fragment of native forest near downtown High Point. It stands as a reminder of Quaker values of stewardship and respect for the environment, and provides a touchstone to the recent, and distant past.

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When the Meeting purchased the property around 1948, the hilltop on which the meetinghouse and lawn stand was a sedge field, possibly left open from use as a pasture during the late nineteenth century. However, the area that is now the South Woods was wooded at that time, being of rugged terrain that may have made timber harvest difficult. A sand rock quarry stood north of the site.

After the meetinghouse was constructed in 1955, the woods were selected as a cool summer gathering place for picnics. A rustic shelter was erected in the woods, and many covered-dish dinners and family cookouts were held under the tall limbs of the woods.

In 2003, 50 years after completion of the meetinghouse, the lower school building of High Point Friends School opened just north of the woods. The proximity of the school to the woods ensured use of the woods by future students of the school for science, ecology, biology, geology and tree identification.

Today, the site harbors indigenous trees that would have been found in the area long before High Point was founded. Soaring canopy trees, understory trees, shrubs and ground cover typically found in the Carolina piedmont, include hardwoods White Oak (Quercus alba), Southern Red Oak (Quercus falcata), Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovata), Tulip Poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera), Blackgum (Nyssa sylvatica), Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua); softwoods such as Shortleaf Pine (Pinus echinata), and White Pine (Pinus strobes); understory trees such as Flowering Dogwood (Cornus Florida), Redbud (Cercis canadensis) and Sourwood (Oxydendrum arboreum); and groundcovers such as Wood Ferns (Dryopteris spp.), Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) and even Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron toxicarium).