BROOKGREEN GARDENS … South Carolina
I live just four hours from BROOKGREEN GARDENS but it was 20 years after I moved here that I made my first visit.
The gardens have been described as “a museum of sculpture” but it doesn’t do justice to the collection. It is many acres that combine the beauty of nature with the beauty of creative works by some of America’s most outstanding sculptors.
Hundreds of statues are placed to our viewing advantage among dogwoods, magnolias, floral settings and, my favorite, the enormous live-oaks dripping with gray/green Spanish Moss. Many statues are integrated with water...in pools or overlooking streams or small lakes.
This is a walker’s paradise. Stone plaques are strewn among the flower beds … most of them for identity but some had short poems or sayings. I got a big kick out of the one that read:
“I used to love my garden, but now my love is dead.
I found a Bachelor’s Button in Black-eyed Susan’s bed.”
I also got a chuckle out of one of the small statues in the indoor museum. It was entitled “The Dowager” and was of a nude woman, very obviously in her 80’s or older. She was portrayed in an aristocratic pose with a haughty look on her face. Her only bit of “attire” was a gold-tipped cane that she held in her hand and I had the distinct feeling that if I laughed out loud she would not have hesitated to use it on me !
BROOKGREEN GARDENS also provides tours, a boat excursion, an animal habitat and a visit to the Alston family plantation where Aaron Burr’s daughter lived.
If you ever get to Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, I would highly recommend a visit to BROOKGREEN GARDENS
posted by Ginnie at 6:20 PM
9 Comments:
It is beautiful. I really like Atalaya which is where Archer Huntington and Anna Hyatt Huntington lived. Mrs. Huntington's studio was huge. Her work is at Brookgreen. They purchased Brookgreen and three adjoining plantations in January of 1930 as a site for a winter home and as a setting for Mrs. Huntington's sculpture. If you haven't been to Atalaya, it too is a wonderful place to visit.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I have photographs of myself at Brook Green Gardens back in the 1940s. My grandparents rented a cottage near our home one winter while we lived at Myrtle Beach and we drove there for a visit. Dianne
I was really impressed till you mentioned the 80 year old nude. Statue or not, that is just scary:))
We do tend to put off visiting attractions when we live in an area. We probably saw more when we used to visit before we moved here.
Lovely Garden Ginnie. I will ask my daughter if she's ever been there.
Love Di ♥
It always seems like those living in an area sometimes "forget" to take time to explore at home. These gardens are certainly not next door to your home at 4 hours away, but seem like well worth the travel.
It looks like a very beautiful place!
Very nice, thanks for sharing.
This looks like a lovely place to visit and enjoy the sculpture. I visited a lovely sculpture park in Belgium, Middelheim Scupture Park.
You could find it on the Internet.
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