Sept/Oct 08 | Features

Best of the New South

50 people, places and things that make us proud

Origins Course, Watersound Beach, Florida

Talk about getting back to your roots. Threaded through the coastal wetland marshes and native woods of the Florida Panhandle, the Origins Course returns golf to its Scottish heritage. Similar to the courses of the Auld Sod, Origins’ demanding six-hole course (which can also be played as a nine-hole executive course or a ten-hole par three) was designed by Davis Love III and his company, Love Golf Design, to make a round of golf there both fun and fast. Which doesn’t mean it’s putt-putt easy. Bunkers, berms, and swales are ever-present—there’s even a bunker in the middle of the third hole’s green.

“We wanted to make a course that was forgiving for beginners and families wanting to play together, and could be played in the time you have when you get home from work in the afternoon,” says Origins’ general manager, Will Hopkins. Best of all, the course takes up less land, which means less water and fertilizer are required to keep it green. (originsgolfclub.com; 850-231-7600)

Horticulturist

Jenks Farmer, Beech Island, South Carolina

They call seventh-generation South Carolinian Jenks Farmer the Crinum King because of his efforts to return to the gardens a hardy lily considered by most Southerners a roadside weed. “Southerners are gardening more,” he says. “They’re more sophisticated and they really like the historical connection of crinums.”

Farmer, owner of LushLife Nursery, is the former curator of the botanical gardens at Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in Columbia. For the past six or so years, though, his obsession has been a twenty-five-acre botanical garden at Moore Farms along South Carolina’s Pee Dee River. “We’re making what they call natural swimming pools— ponds that will filter themselves—using native elderberry with an exotic plant called Chaste tree and mixing in a native purple aster and some creamy colored lilies. We have this incredibly diverse flora in the South, and we need people with creativity to inspire us to use the things that grow in our own woods.” (lushlifegarden.com)

Hot Sauce

Old St. Augustine Datil Pepper Sauce

With names like Liquid Lava and, um, Butt Twister, it often seems like hot sauce has become more about attention-grabbing labels than culinary artistry these days. But for a more sophisticated take on spicy sauce, look to St. Augustine, Florida, the epicenter of the universe for datil peppers. These little yellow peppers pack plenty of heat but with a distinctive sweet flavor, and locals will tell you they don’t grow the same anywhere else. Try Old St. Augustine. The sauce features datil peppers in a base of carrot juice with lime, garlic, vinegar, and a few secret spices. For devout fireheads, the Snake Bite version provides some extra kick. (tasteofstaugustine.com; 904-829-1109)

Hot Ticket

Florida-Georgia game, Jacksonville, Florida