Pocosin Arts takes seriously its relationship with the pocosin, the predominant wetland ecology of the rewgion, and has made connecting culture to environment through the arts its mission.

The little arts organization with the big ideas is largely the result of the vision of Feather Phillips, Executive Director of Pocosin Arts. "Feather has been inspirational in helping me see what potential I have and feeding it," says Carol Lee, director of the clay program at Pocosin. And others associated with the program echo those sentiments of admiration.

It is one thing to have big dreams, but another to fund them, and Phillips has proven to be as good a fundraiser as dreamer. She approached the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, and a 1994 grant of $25,000 for seed money made Pocosin Arts a reality. Another $70,000 from Reynolds in the coming three years and an additional $80,000 over a five year period from the Kathleen Price Bryan Family Fund kept things rolling. Further funding from the N.C. Arts Council, the N.C. General Assembly, the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, the N.C. Department of Envirnomental and Natural Resources Division of Forest Resources and Office of Environment Education, and the A.J. Fletcher Foundation led to a talented staff, diverse programs and exciting projects. It was in this spirit of global collaboration, spriritual renewal, and environmental awareness that Pocosin Arts proposed the 7000 Juniper project as fitting celebration to use in the millennium in coastal Carolina. The juniper also known as the Atlantic white cedar, was centeral to the culture, providing wood for boats, channel markers, shingles — all mainstais of coastal life — until their popularity led to their near disappareance and endangered species status.

At dawn on the vernal equinox, March 20, 2000, a community of artists, naturalists, educators, and others gathered to plant juniper seedlings. Through ceremony, celebration, and documentation, the project began the reforesting of the North Carolina coastal plain with juniper.

Later in the morning, every student from Tyrrell Elementary School planted a tree along with a hand-made clay marker on which he or she inscribed a symbol to commemorate the day, the project, and the millennium.

By shortly after noon, the first 100 junipers were in the ground. Pocosin Arts will work with the Art School at East Carolina University in Greenville to design the space for the remaining 6,000 trees, creating a design to blend art and the natural environment. Planted in a seven-acre site in Pocosin Lakes Refuge, the trees should be overhead in five years and 20 feet tall within 10 years.

"It will be open space alternating with dense planting, the way the trees grow in nature," says Phillips, "but it will be a place visitors can enter to sit, meditate, contemplate."