Brookgreen Garden Tour

This weekend I went to another of the garden estates around the area.  Like its English forebearers great estates were established here in the 17th-19th centuries, and also similarly, they are now the sites of some of the wonderful gardens in this area. From the website:

This was a rice plantation, one of the largest crops grown in antebellum times.

"During the Seventeenth Century, English settlers first came to the Carolina territory from Barbados and other Caribbean islands.  A plantation economy was well established on the islands, and the planters were looking to expand their holdings.  From the beginning, they brought enslaved Africans to work the new lands. The planters at The Oaks, Brookgreen, Springfield and Laurel Hill plantations (the four former plantations that make up the present-day Brookgreen Gardens) established family dynasties and were leaders of the rice planting elite during the antebellum years.  However, the success of these great rice plantations rested on the backs of the enslaved Africans.  As early as the mid-eighteenth century, a majority of the population in the Lowcountry of South Carolina were enslaved Africans and during the late antebellum period they accounted for almost 90 percent of the population in the region. They provided physical labor, skill and technology required for rice cultivation and production and infused the environment with their customs, traditions, crafts, and language known today as Gullah-Geechee culture."

Obviously this was a time of great wealth and fortune for a few, at the cost of freedom and hardship of the many.  

Today, its a sculpture garden

I was very taken with this statue and pool

Ballerina Roses and Daisies

Not all of the sculptures were classical!

What are considered weeds here have their own place!

Quite a bit of woodlands too

In the Child's Garden

Slightly cooler than Charleston, the tall snapdragons are still alive!

A scenic view on the walk

Love this pool

....a lot

The White Border (with Griffon)

One of the few copper statues

Foxgloves are at their height of glory

more Foxgloves

More snapdragons, with a larkspur or two

I think this is a Monsieur Tiller

The Muses in Fountain form

Another shot, it was beautiful

I was particularly taken by this sculpture holding a sculpture

Knockouts!

Snapdragons, foxglove

Its a formal garden but many portions have that slightly wild abandoned look that I love

I visited on a stormy day, in the 'in-between' season... after the spring magnificence but before the summer abundance... but still it was beautiful and informative.  You need about 2 hours to explore the formal gardens, and an additional 2 to walk the nature walks, plantation/rice fields area, see the butterflies and the zoo.

Garden Statuary Redux: Naked Women?

So its been a year since I decided that I wanted a statue for my garden, and even left a place for it to stand, unplanted.   I have hemmed and hawed, and looked at lots of cement but for some reason I have not been able to just bite the bullet and get one!  There is something about 'stuff' in the garden, to me it either seems to work or REALLY not work, and the exact formula for why this is isn't apparent.  Haven't you seen those yards that look like Zeus came and threw up on them?  I can't help but think 'wannabe NJ mafia' every time I see them! (and if you are in the NJ mafia please I mean no offense, its just our styles are different you see).  I've also seen garden gnomes gone awry, and country kitschy which veered into "I've also got my VEE-HICKLE up on blocks on around the side o the shed."  But I have seen all of this done well too, and while I jest, it isn't just an overabundance that makes or breaks it.  Its something else, or lots of something else's.

Anyhow, so here I still am with no statue.  I have narrowed the choices down, and I vacillate between non-naked ancient females, and more modern female forms more in the art deco vein.   Cutesy is out, as are Buddhas, St. Francis's and Mary's on the half shell.  Animals are out, and while I like really like the ideas of gargoyles and fairies I don't think either really fit my personality, and frankly, gargoyles just don't hang out near white picket fences.  Its against their very nature.  There is nothing gothic about my home, unfortunately.

Now on the naked, how do you feel about that?  I consider myself the opposite of prudish, and believe many of the 'naked' works of art in this world are just wonderful, however I wonder if I got one of these goddesses with boobs showing if I would ever stop saying to myself, "hmmm, that boob is out."  Something about having a life sized boob hanging out in the garden day in and day out just doesn't say "restful" to me.  And heaven forbid there was ever a sub 35 year old male that had to be back there for any length of time while keeping up a normal conversation that didn't mention the fact that there were boobs loose in the garden.

I have also thought briefly about some other ornamental item, i.e. a fountain, or a large urn or a combination fountain/large urn, but these just don't seem to be doing it for me either.  What I want is a statue.

Here's the latest in the slew of considerations. Any of these strike you as tasteful and workable?  I am scared to death I am going to bring home some totally gaudy 100 pound albatross.  Because once the deed is done I don't think you can take it back! And it won't be easy to hide either....

Assume my version would be fully covered!

Visiting OPG (other people's gardens)

OPG is gardening nirvana in my opinion.  Flowers you'll never grow, varietals you've never seen, all there to be sniffed and ogled and then you get to walk away easily without pulling at the crabgrass bunch or wondering if those few small holes in the leaves of that exotic plant are portentous tidings of an all night leaf feasting orgy.  Those flowers are there, already staked and watered.  They have been dug and redug to find their perfect plot of dirt.  They do not remind you that if you don't deadhead they will not bloom again, and they keep their mouths zippered about previous bouts of pestilence and disease while company is around.  

They are just there for you, in that moment, for that moment.

I love them.  And like all love, you decide you want it all the time.  Every day.  Permanently.   Forever.  Despite indisputable ephemeral perfection, OPG in all its glory has to come live at home.   And hence, now we all have gardens too, don't we?

Photo Travel Journal

I travelled a bit this year, and here are a few of the colorful, lively, planty shots. Hope you enjoy!

For the love of 4 o'clock

Just a little in the way of background.

I fell in love with my mothers garden this past summer, when I visited for an extended bit. Sure I had always known my mom had the greenest of thumbs, and the loveliest of gardens. She prescribes to that 'english cottage' look by default, where, within reason, reseeders can flourish, things run into each other and over each other, and a riot of sizes, shapes and colors run rampant through the multiple gardens of my childhood home. I had, thanks to a childhood of living around the plants, a passing knowledge of many of the cottage variety plants; beebalm, four o'clocks, nasturtiums, zinnias, catchfly, dahlias, and more were familiar to me.

I had been home several times during the summer season through the years since I moved to the big city after school, though more often than not, I visited home during the winter season, when all that was left of the ephemeral paradise were a few brown husks, and various pots and garden statuary standing oddly by themselves, looking out of sorts and out of place. I do remember coming home in May once, maybe 10 years ago and being astounded how beautiful the yard and gardens were, but it was filed away in the 'cannot use now' category as were most living green things in my 600 sq foot Manhattan apartment. Maybe someday.

Anyhow, for several weeks this year, I sat out by the pool surrounded by four o'clocks in every direction. Nasturtiums were blooming directly in front of them, and some sort of flowering vine had taken over the side of the 'cabin'. The soft buzzing of tiny bumblebees in the afternoon sun was always present as was a ever so slightly amazing smell of plants far and wide, and cut grass from the yard. I would round the cabin and duck the clothesline to the dedication garden, and would be met by a profusion of zinnas, beebalm, garden phlox and catchfly in their late summer splendor on my right, intermixed with dozens of flowers I had seen before but couldn't remember because my mom always called them by their latin names, which without context quickly went the way of most foreign words. On my left a rose of sharon was 15 feet tall and tons of little roses's of sharon (to my mom's consternation) were trying to sneak a living into the surrounding bed of coreopsis.

Every morning, myself and Shorty, the cat, would walk out to the front garden at the head of the driveway and visit the dahlias, now so heavy and tall that half had flopped over and then decided to continued their vertical climb up. The remnants of agapathas had given way to cleome and others. I would skirt up to the driveway entrance to see what was growing down the hill and kick a few of the black walnuts off the lawn and down the hill to make my stepfather happy. Shorty and I would then round to the front of the house, never used, where the boxwoods grow unhindered and wildflowers and roses have joined them in the chaos. Next stop was following the house around to the shade gardens, and peeking to see if the bleeding hearts were still doing their thing or had succumbed to the viney neighbor, then joining the impatiens and begonias on my way back into the house for another cup of coffee.

What was different this time? I now have a PLACE to fall in love with the growing of flowers. I moved cities, and though I don't have 5 acres to grow plants, I do have a front garden and a back garden in Charleston, SC at a house I had just put an offer on. And I was going to make my gardens grow. Starting first with some 4 o'clock seed stow-aways, stuffed sneakily in my bag by my mom, who must have suspected I was in love with them.