Guilford College and Piedmont Land Conservancy (PLC) have reached an agreement to permanently protect 20 acres of Guilford Woods, preserving one of the most ecologically intact and historically significant landscapes remaining in Greensboro.

Fundraising continues through December 2027 to protect an additional 120 acres closer to the heart of the campus.

The milestone, made possible by PLC’s determined fundraising, is seen by both organizations as a promise kept. Guilford President Jean Bordewich said Monday’s announcement on the conservation easement and the fundraising progress is about more than conservation. It is about honoring the College’s responsibility to generations of Guilfordians — past, present and future.

“This is Guilford keeping a promise, in partnership with PLC,” Jean said. “Guilford Woods has shaped generations of this College, and now we’ve made sure it will keep shaping generations for many years to come.”

Under a conservation easement between Guilford and the conservancy, 20 acres at the corner of Jefferson Road and Bennington Drive on the eastern edge of campus are preserved forever. The agreement is part of a larger effort called Saving Guilford Woods, which seeks to protect a total of 140 acres of wooded College land.

In June 2025, Guilford and PLC signed an agreement that set this work in motion: PLC agreed to raise the funds to create a conservation easement for a portion of Guilford Woods. A conservation easement permanently limits certain future uses of the property, such as residential or commercial development, and travels with the land, no matter who holds the deed in the future.

The area covered by the easement  will remain as it is for future Guilford students who need a quiet place to think, for alumni who return decades from now to walk the same trails, and for the Greensboro neighbor who has never set foot on campus but may one day discover that this forest is theirs, too.

An $8.5 million campaign, launched in September 2025, set out to protect 120 wooded acres that include the College’s beloved Witness Tree, which has stood for more than 300 years. Earlier this year, an unexpected opportunity arrived: a chance to protect an additional 20 acres on the condition that $2.5 million could be raised by June 30.

PLC moved quickly and boldly, and the funds were raised. With the easement now recorded, the full $2.5 million will be paid to the College in exchange for the development rights on the 20 acres — the first portion of Guilford Woods to be permanently secured.

For PLC Executive Director Kevin Redding, the milestone reflects the power of two organizations bringing different strengths to the same goal.

“This is what partnership looks like,” said Kevin. “Guilford came to us with this significant project and the conviction to see it through, and our job was to make sure the resources caught up to that conviction. Twenty acres in, we’re just getting started, and we’re not doing it alone.”

The parcel now protected sits at the highest point of the Guilford Woods property, which helps shelter the water quality of the stream corridor running through the land below it. It holds some of the least disturbed forest anywhere in the project area, soil that has never been tilled, native plant communities largely free of invasive pressure, and a richness of wildlife.

A haven for all

Guilford Woods is also believed to be the last remaining unprotected mature forest in central Greensboro, the state’s third-largest city. The woods function as a wildlife corridor and a documented stopover for migrating birds — the kind of habitat that, once fragmented, cannot easily be rebuilt.

Lynn Moseley, Charles A. Dana Professor of Biology Emerita at Guilford and a director on the PLC board, spent decades walking through and teaching students in the woods.

“You still hear wood thrush there in the spring, a bird that needs a real forest interior to nest, not just trees,” she says. “That kind of intactness is rare this close to downtown Greensboro, and once it’s gone, no amount of planting brings it back on any timeline that matters.”

The partnership between Guilford and PLC is not finished. Since fundraising by PLC began in September 2025, $7.6 million has been raised toward an $11 million total goal according to the conservancy. That leaves $3.4 million still to raise by December 2027.

Should the full campaign succeed, the majority of the $11 million in total funds raised will go to the College in exchange for the development rights across the full 140 acres. The remainder will support trail development and public access to this special land.

Mary Magrinat, PLC board president and chair of the Saving Guilford Woods Campaign, the announcement is “a win-win-win for PLC, Guilford College and the greater community.”

“The land will be permanently protected, Guilford College will receive vital financial support for its programs, and the public will gain official access to pristine green space in a rapidly growing part of Greensboro,” she says.

On paper, this is a conservation easement: a legal document, a survey, a closing date. In practice, Monday’s announcement is Guilford acting on what it has always said it believes.

The Quaker testimonies upon which Guilford was founded — simplicity, integrity, stewardship and community — extend to the more-than-human world and to land the College has held, taught on and been shaped by for generations. Placing a permanent easement on Guilford Woods is, in a real sense, the College acting on those values in the most literal way available to it: practicing stewardship on the ground where it started.

The woods will remain what they have long been for Guilford: an outdoor classroom studied across disciplines through the many shared lenses of place, water and history. And they will become a place that invites others to connect, too, joining the adjacent PLC-protected 92-acre Price Park, home of the Kathleen Clay Edwards Family Branch Library, to form more than 230 acres of protected green space and miles of walking trails in the heart of this rapidly growing city.

Jim Hood ’79, Charles A. Dana Professor of English Emeritus and former interim president, taught nature writing in the woods for more than 20 years.

He says the woods always teach lessons that refuse to stay neatly within the boundaries of a single academic discipline.

“I, and the woods, never let you specialize for long. You’d go out to talk about Thoreau and come back talking about hydrology, migration patterns, whose land this was before it was anyone’s campus,” he said. “That’s what a real outdoor classroom does. It refuses to stay in one department.”

An Invitation

This is the first real public step in a longer effort. Until now, Saving Guilford Woods has largely been carried forward by a dedicated circle of early supporters alongside Guilford and PLC’s fundraising teams. Sharing this milestone is an invitation for the wider community, including alumni, parents and friends who have walked these trails, or who simply believe in what they represent, to learn more about the campaign and consider being part of what comes next.

To learn more about Saving Guilford Woods or make a gift toward protecting the remaining 120 acres, visit Piedmont Land Conservancy’s website or contact Karrie Jo Manson ’82 at kmanson@piedmontland.org.