The Angel Oak is a storied Southern live oak tree, beloved by the Johns Island and Charleston communities and enjoyed by visitors from across the country. Its expansive trunk has a circumference of over 25 feet, and its broad canopy covers an area of over 17,000 square feet–supporting habitat for dozens of species and enriching the surrounding ecosystem. The Angel Oak was historically an essential Indigenous cultural site, as well as a spiritually significant gathering place for local Gullah Geechee communities on Johns Island for generations. Thousands of individuals visit Charleston to seek its calming presence each year.

 

The Angel Oak was initially saved from mounting development pressures by the grassroots efforts of dedicated community leaders and conservation teams. Lowcountry Land Trust ultimately preserved the tree and its surrounding ecosystems with generous financial support from 12,000+ individuals, the City of Charleston, the South Carolina State Conservation Bank, and the Charleston County Greenbelt. After purchasing the property surrounding the Oak over ten years ago, the Land Trust has engaged local partners and the community in an effort to create a publicly accessible landscape that will conserve and enhance the Angel Oak’s integrity and the ecosystem it supports.

 

The Lowcountry Land Trust commissioned Nelson Byrd Woltz to develop a Comprehensive Plan for the new Angel Oak Preserve, which unites the city’s current 9-acre Angel Oak Park with the surrounding 35-acre property. The design is rooted in the ecological and cultural history of the land and in the Lowcountry Land Trust’s mission of protecting and preserving the natural resources of the South Carolina Lowcountry. The plan envisions the Preserve as a place for education, contemplation, and communing with the magnificent Oak and the surrounding ecology. It positions the Angel Oak Preserve to be a site for: Community, Spirituality, Activism, Ecology, Education, Conservation, and Resilience.

 

The planning process began with deep listening, expanding on the Lowcountry Land Trust’s work in documenting the site’s ecological and cultural history and many years of continued community outreach. The design team began with a comprehensive reading of the site, following the traces of the natural and human interventions that form the landscape of today. The design team located the site in time, along the continuum of human activity, agricultural advancement, and settlement of the region, each era redefining the relationship between people and nature and leaving its mark on the landscape.

 

The design team also located the site within the broader regional ecologies, watershed systems, and underlying geologic formations. A Rapid Ecological Assessment focusing on avian, lepidoptera, herpetofauna, and fungi species revealed a rich environment and served as a guide for future initiatives at the Preserve. Likewise, the design team carefully considered site systems - from arrival, circulation, parking, and stormwater management to ecological features, signage, interpretation goals, and development pressures. Each of these inquiries provided a framework and guiding principles for the design - by shifting, overlapping, and juxtaposing these lenses, Nelson Byrd Woltz synthesized a vision for the future that reflects an authentic sense of place and is rooted in the essential components of site and context.

 

This integrative site analysis yielded a rich design process in which the team developed multiple concepts for site organization, circulation, and program. Through close collaboration with community stakeholders, including representatives from the City of Charleston, the Gullah Geechee community, and Johns Island neighbors, Nelson Byrd Woltz refined these concepts and identified key areas of concern, desired program, and organizational priorities and connections. The final concept was chosen based on its viability and strength for future operations, visitor and community access, user experience, interpretation and education of ecological and cultural histories, sustainability, and preservation of the Angel Oak and its surrounding ecologies for future generations.

 

The visitor experience of the Angel Oak Preserve begins with the Welcome Center Pavilion, which orients visitors to the site and the significance of the Angel Oak and serves as an important space for community-building. From here, visitors access the Preserve’s trail network, which connects the site’s key cultural and interpretive features, forests, and wetlands with program nodes, including a nature play area and an outdoor classroom. The trails also provide connections to significant adjacent sites, including the Haut Gap Middle School, Sea Island Healthcare, and the future-planned Greenway.

 

The journey to the Angel Oak within the Preserve was designed with reverence to the power and experience of the magnificent Oak. Visitors arrive at one of two parking areas and spend several minutes walking along peaceful, forested pathways with thoughtfully placed wayfinding and interpretive information as a moment of preparation before arriving at a space of sanctuary where the Angel Oak sits. The Angel Oak trail, which encircles the tree itself, is a ribbon of raised boardwalk along the perimeter of the Oak Grove that hovers above the ground, reducing compaction to the Oak’s root system and providing increased accessibility for visitors.

 

Parking at Angel Oak Park has been a critical issue for many years, and the proximity of current parking to the Oak has resulted in root compaction, particulate pollution, and disruption to the ecosystem it sustains. The parking was relocated away from the Angel Oak’s roots to reduce impact and preserve sacred space around the Oak Grove. Visitor Parking areas are instead tucked into the nearby forest and consist of permeable aggregate to mitigate stormwater runoff. Precipitation and runoff will drain into micro-bioretention areas located near the Welcome Center.

 

The design process revealed many complex layers of social and ecological history embedded in the Angel Oak Preserve site, including remnants of a former plantation settlement and footprints of enslaved workers cabins in addition to the Angel Oak itself. The Comprehensive Landscape Plan also proposes a Commemorative/ Reflective Space at a high point within the Preserve as a place to reflect on larger connections to history, culture, and community both within the Preserve and beyond. This space would honor those who have come before, look forward to the challenges of the future, and offer space to gather as a community for storytelling, discussion, and remembrance.

 

The vision outlined in the Comprehensive Landscape Plan celebrates the magnetic draw of the centuries-old tree in the heart of Johns Island while preserving and protecting its immediate environment. The design celebrates the Angel Oak as a witness to our shared history, a center of community and connection, and a symbol of hope and resilience