Goldberry Grove

08/31/2026

When you buy a native tree from us you aren’t just buying a tree for your yard - here’s how it actually works. The trees at the giant stores have generally been raised far away from you, manipulated for uniform shape and the ability to be shoved into small boxes, but for no particularly strong reason connected to surviving a West Virginia hillside. When you order stock which is the regional equivalent - i.e. Started from seed parent trees that already tolerate our winters, our heavy soil and the presence of hungry deer - you’re ordering something a lot more likely to grow up to maturity.

A tree which you’re going to discover has mysteriously croaked in year two isn’t of much value to anyone. Native species tend also to support a food web where ornamentals don’t much. This is the area Doug Tallamy usually is the referenced standard and where native oak, for example, supports several hundred insect species, many of them the caterpillars which will become nesting songbirds, while some of our most commonly sold ornamental varieties host a small handful. If you order native you are literally ordering not just more shade and vertical structure, but a living section of the fauna on your land that will rely on that native tree…

In Appalachia most of this land isn’t public- forest, it’s private- a series of many pieces of restoration rather than one grand undertaking, so shipping each tree means another piece of the puzzle is being fitted.

Ours are raised from the Appalachia region-adapted stock and we ship them bare root in the appropriate planting window for your zone. - Is it too early?
Are you worried space will be tight?
Don’t know which one to order?

Visit: at thegrovenursery.com

08/28/2026

08/28/2026

A new generation of farmers is rising up

- we believe in community
- we believe in sustainability
- we believe in lifting up our communities

Do you want to trust your food?
Do you want community?

Come join us!

08/26/2026

Few know that Dolly had a special connection to the American Chestnut tree. She attributed her interest to her uncle Bill Owens. Dolly planted thousands of chestnuts at Dollywood and was a great supporter of The American Chestnut Foundation. Dolly believed that the waves of restoration could heal the damages of blight that almost erased the American Chestnut tree from the forest.

This was always Dolly’s nature.

While the world celebrated her voice, she was undoubtedly thinking of the trees her ancestors sang about. About what grows after you are gone. About her legacy back to the Great Smoky Mountains and beyond.

The songs can echo forever. But so will the chestnuts she fought to restore, standing in the Great Smoky Mountains, testament to Dolly’s belief in the value of restoration and tree planting.

Thank you Dolly, for loving the trees, for fighting for the restoration of the Great Smoky Mountains. Rest well, your trees will long remember you.

" O Chestnut Tree " is a single by Dolly Parton. It was released in September 2012 as a free download from The American Chestnut Foundation website. The website required users to signup for their...

08/14/2026

Day 2. Planting.

Fifteen of the inoculated trees went in the ground yesterday. We walked the property looking for the right spot and settled on a stretch of dappled light, enough sun to push growth, enough canopy that we are not asking these seedlings to start over in full exposure.

Most agricultural truffles growing in this country happen in a cleared orchard, rows in the open, everything managed. We are trying to find out whether it works inside a forest that is already standing. Nobody hands you that answer. You put the trees in and you wait.

And waiting is the honest part of this. There is no cheap way to look at a root and know what took. A single lab sample runs over a hundred dollars, which is fine for one tree and impossible for a planting you intend to grow. So this stand of fifteen is the test.

Whatever comes up out of that leaf litter in a few years is the data. It’s the looooong game. That is most of what farming trees is.

08/13/2026

The most misunderstood tree on the homestead? The black walnut 🌰

It's an agroforestry powerhouse. The wood — especially for veneer — is genuinely priceless, and the nuts can become liquor, ice cream, or a protein-rich snack all on their own. Gardeners often treat it like a villain, but the 'damage' is largely root competition, and there are plenty of species that grow just fine in its shade. It's native, and it feeds the land it grows on. We think it deserves a lot more love.

Do you have a black walnut on your land — friend or foe? 👇



Photo: prague.czech.photo (Flickr), CC BY 2.0.

08/12/2026

Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) flowers straight out of its own bark — pink blooms erupting from the trunk and branches before the leaves, a trick called cauliflory. The flowers are edible and tangy in a salad. Native, early, and built to feed the first bees of spring. A tree that decided leaves were optional and flowers came first.

08/12/2026

A nice overview of the progress made so far. You can see the sight of the new polebarn that will one day house two farm workers, our equipment, and the woodworking shop.

Our syntropic systems starting to come together from chestnut and jujubees and other agroforestry practices

It’s been a good two years here at goldberry grove.

08/11/2026

Day 1. Inoculation Day.

Spent Saturday with our hands in slurry. Red oak, chestnut, hazelnut. Pecan truffle and porcini going onto the roots before any of them ever see the ground here.

Nothing about this is new. Every tree on this ridge already runs a fungal partnership underground, trading sugar for phosphorus and water it could never reach on its own. The chestnuts that used to hold these slopes did the same thing. All we are doing is picking the partner on purpose instead of leaving it to chance.

A hazelnut is already a crop. An oak is already timber and mast. Put a truffle or a porcini on the same root system and that tree is working two jobs at once, one above the litter and one below it. That is forest farming. Stack the yields, keep the canopy.

Workshop led by , who knows more about what happens on a root tip than the rest of us combined.

Now we just have to name the thing. Perhaps Rhizofest or Mycorrhizae Day. Weigh in below, because we are getting nowhere without a network of us :).

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08/11/2026

Forest farming with mycorrhizal fungi. Pecan truffle and king bolete soaked tree roots.

We are trialing with Deitrich how to viably scale mushroom and truffle production within existing forests. Also how to give other agroforestry orchards an easy seedling to start with, and a better understanding of crop yield.

The unfortunate thing about mushroom cultivation is that by definition it is microscopic. You have very little clue whether something will grow from it, or whether it is cross contaminated, without spending an inordinate amount of money.

Even within existing truffle orchards it costs about $120 to analyze one sample. Now think about trying to know how hundreds of trees are doing. It piles up.

So the alternative is to at least know the colonization has taken before planting. It doesn't guarantee fruiting, but it's less opaque than the current system.

Would you plant a white or red oak that was full of porcini?