Montreat Landcare

Montreat, NC is a secluded mountain cove community nestled at the foot of Greybeard Mountain and surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains. We are located in the far eastern portion of Buncombe County near the Eastern Continental Divide. We are blessed with a great variety of native flora and fauna, gently flowing streams and gorgeous mountain vistas.

Life here is lived at a slower, more peaceful pace. There is no commercial development in Montreat, not even a traffic light. Most of the streets are narrow and winding, with much less vehicle traffic than larger town or cities. This is an advantage to our preferred method of travel - walking. Multiple trails wind through hundreds of acres of wilderness surrounding the Town, along creeks, across rustic bridges and through preserved woodland areas.

A landcare group is a community-based group of volunteers working on conservation projects that contribute to positive environmental, social and economic outcomes. Developing financially viable local landcare groups and getting existing landcare-like groups to sponsor landcare conservation projects in the southern Appalachian region represents an opportunity to build widespread support for the ecological restoration and protection of the southern Appalachian landscape.

With help from the Land-of-Sky Regional Council, the Montreat Landcare Team formed in January 2007 and became the first landcare group in North Carolina. The team has brainstormed a list of about twenty potential projects ranging from erosion control to environmental education to electric vehicles to a website with a scientific database of projects.

An effort is underway to start a landcare movement in the United States. Montreat and the Land-of-Sky Regional Council is part of that effort.

Landcare is a conservation movement that brings local communities, private corporations and government agencies together to support hands-on action to promote sustainable land and water management. Originating in Australia in 1989 to restore severely damaged ecosystems “one watershed at a time,” landcare combines the following: