Long Branch Environmental Education Center

The Long Branch Environmental Education Center, Inc. is a small educational institute in Buncombe County's Newfound Mountains, about 18 miles northwest of Asheville, North Carolina. Set aside in 1974 as an ecological sanctuary and land trust, it has developed into an educational center for sharing positive strategies of local self-reliance in the areas of environmental design, organic food production, renewable energy, shelter design and construction, appropriate technology, resource conservation, recycling, wildlife protection, and improved environmental quality. The Land itself is 1400 acres of rugged wilderness and farmland ranging in elevation from 3,000 to 5,152 feet. Over 1375 hundred acres are mostly eastern hardwood forest, bisected with several mountain springs and streams where rare, threatened, and endangered native plant species are conserved. Twenty-five acres are managed in a Permaculture design of small scale organic gardens, crops, orchards, vineyards, and rainbow trout aquaculture in an integrated edible landscape. Structures on the land include three passive solar staff residences with three attached solar greenhouses, three composting toilets, one passive solar conference center, a traditional 1917 farm house, an old tobacco barn converted into a rustic dormitory, and miscellaneous out buildings, including a secluded retreat shelter.