You don’t have to look any further than the way the King Woods development was incorporated into the rolling hills around Pendleton King Park or how the majestic Darlington Oaks were planted to give Forrest Hills so much of its shady, stately grandeur to see that when developing a neighborhood, Blanchard and Calhoun has always put a premium on nature. In an increasingly less-than-natural world where homeowners have consistently been asked to sacrifice the solitude of nature for the sanctity of the home, Blanchard and Calhoun has offered alternatives.

Simply put, we believe that home is where the heart is, and the heart is always healthier when it’s exposed to a little fresh air.

Perhaps nowhere is this modern commitment more notable than at Bartram Trail and Tudor Branch, two Columbia County conservation communities where the stewardship of greenspace isn’t left to chance, it’s written into the code.

Not only was each community strategically located among the woods and water that make Columbia County so desirable, each was developed with a Wilderness Trust, an official non-profit foundation dedicated to the preservation and maintenance of that greenspace. That means not just setting limits on development, but establishing walking trails, improving habitat and constructing observation areas and picnic areas and even outdoor classrooms.

That’s more than just wooded buffers and some picnic tables — for Tudor Branch, for example, it means preserving approximately 140 acres of the 350- acre planned unit development.

Think of it as living inside a nature preserve.

At Blanchard and Calhoun, we think suburban sprawl can be a good thing when it means lying in the cool grass watching the clouds drift by.