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Here grow maple, oak, hickory, cottonwood, sycamore, river birch, hackberry, fronds bowed under climbing English ivy, with winter creeper spreading underfoot.

Fair Bluff is small-town idyllic, nestled among fields of corn and tobacco near the South Carolina border, shielded from the Lumber River by a narrow bank of tupelo gum, river birch and bald cypress trees.

The go-to birch in the Mid-Atlantic garden is the river birch, of which the most popular variety is Heritage.

Local greenery, like bayberry, cherry laurel, river birch, lavender, juniper and switchgrass, separates white picnic-style tables in this restaurant’s spacious garden.

“There’s a Carolina wren in those dead river birches,” she said as we walked the course.