WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. —Old Salem Museums & Gardens will host the 16th Biennial Conference on Restoring Southern Gardens and Landscapes in Winston-Salem, Thursday through Saturday.

The conference topic is “Lost Landscapes/Preserved Prospects: Confronting Human and Natural Threats to the Historic Southern Landscape.”

Every year important Southern landscapes — whether rural or urban, formal or natural, agricultural or industrial, coastal or mountain — are imperiled or succumb to threats that include natural disasters, human apathy and greed, haphazard development, and/or unmanaged growth. As Hurricane Katrina has shown, the forces of nature can be catastrophic and uncontrollable.

Human activity that abuses the southern landscape cannot be fully stopped, but it can be mitigated or controlled.

A wide range of efforts, including those of private individuals, local governments, and regional land conservancies, among other preservation initiatives, are being utilized to protect Southern landscapes.

The 2007 Conference on Restoring Southern Gardens and Landscapes will address the past and look to future threats and solutions, while addressing means of preserving the grounds of southern history.

Since 1979, the Conference on Restoring Southern Gardens and Landscapes has been an important forum for garden history and landscape preservation.

In 2006, the Southern Garden History Society established a fund designated to endow the Flora Ann Bynum keynote speaker at the biennial conference.

Bynum, who passed away in 2006, was a founder of both the conference and the Southern Garden History Society.

She served as secretary/treasurer for the society from 1983 to 2005.

The 2007 Flora Ann Bynum Keynote Speaker is Dr. David Jones, director of the North Carolina Zoological Park.

Among the conference speakers is:

Dr. Elizabeth Boggess, Consulting Archaeologist and Landowner, Natchez.