Touring Brookgreen Gardens

Just beyond Fighting Stallions on the entrance drive stands Donald de Lue’s bronze heroic sculpture, a memorial to American soldiers lost at Omaha Beach in Normandy. Other patriotic installations are found throughout the garden. In many ways the entrance drive is a trailer for coming attractions.

Anna’s Youth Taming the Wild is rendered in stone in contrast to the many metal sculptures throughout the garden. The Huntingtons sourced marble anywhere from Tennessee to Italy, and occasionally resorted to ordinary limestone.

Eugenie Frederica Shonnard’s gray marble Marabou is another hint at the unique sourcing strategy. The Huntingtons were devoted to representing women artists as much as possible, and were quite successful considering a pre-feminist social environment that kept the works of women in very short supply.

Richard McDermott Miller’s Wind on the Water is a windswept woman with long streaming hair, upraised arms and a diaphanous flowing gown. She is stepping lightly off her pedestal directly opposite to the entrance of the Archer Milton Huntington and Anna Hyatt Huntington Sculpture Garden.

Another world

Classical music is piped throughout the garden and among the artwork and lush vegetation you’ll find occasional marble slabs inscribed with poetry and quotations. Much has changed since the garden expanded far beyond Anna’s original butterfly design, which now forms a central core for a sprawling network of trails and ponds. Let’s say for the sake of argument you’re a family with small children just walking through the gate, some of those kids maybe not quite yet the art connoisseurs.

Your smart-aleck ten-year-old is likely to point out that all this nudity is precisely what you’ve been trying to block from view on the Internet and cable TV. The smaller kids will want to eat or mess around in the creek or see the animals. With the exception of the nudity, Brookgreen has you covered. The staff is friendly and helpful but it’s not willing to swim out to throw a cloak around the goddess Diana as she poses with her bow and arrow on a pedestal at the center of a reflecting pool.

With all its varied attractions Brookgreen Gardens is a National Historic Landmark accredited by the American Association of Museums. Curators continue to bring in the finest American sculpture while planners and landscapers continue to create settings in which to display them. Your admission ticket to the garden is good for seven days, and you’ll need them.

Stuff besides sculpture

Pavilion Restaurant is next to the Rainey Sculpture Pavilion and Courtyard Café is at the Lowcountry Center. You can buy souvenirs at Keepsake Gift Shop adjacent to the Tarbox Welcome Center.

The Lowcountry Center and Lowcountry Zoo are showcases of flora and fauna. You’ll get the whole story on local plantation-era herbs and vegetables at Bethea’s Cultural Garden, and excursions of various descriptions launch from the center.

The zoo is the only certified zoo on the Carolina coast, and you’ll see otters, alligators, red and gray foxes, wild turkey, deer, and a butterfly exhibit. Two aviaries house the bird collections -- the Cypress Swamp Aviary and the Birds of Prey Aviaries. The animals here were either raised in captivity or have been victims of a significant injury. In either case they cannot live in the wild.

The Labyrinth at Brookgreen is located along The Trail Beyond the Garden Wall. Created in accordance with a medieval design, it is a seven-circuit Chartres style labyrinth made of shells and natural grasses and set on the banks of a tributary of the Waccamaw River. The purpose of a labyrinth is quiet, walking meditation, and interpretive panels are set up to explain all that. If you prefer to sit and meditate, try one of the creekside benches.

Seasonal events include a spring garden fair, summer evening dining programs (with live music and theatrical performances), Harvest Home Weekend Festival in the fall and Night of a Thousand Candles during the holiday season. Brookgreen Gardens also offers workshops in sculpture throughout the year, taught by nationally known sculptors.

Excursions

Go by foot, by bus or by boat to see the former rice plantations. Some of these tours may not be suitable for very small children.

Mini-bus is the only way to reach the trailhead of the Oaks Plantation History and Nature Trail, an approximately one-mile loop with interpretive panels along the way devoted to slave narratives. Tours depart on a regular schedule from the Lowcountry Center.

Go by boat for a creek cruise on a 48-foot pontoon boat “The Springfield.” The tour follows the riverbanks where you’ll see alligators, waterfowl and osprey while an interpreter narrates the history of the rice fields and the lives of the African slaves.

Go by foot on the Southern Trek, a back-roads circuit of The Oaks through the plantation’s rice fields and the Alston family cemetery. The cemetery contains a monument erected to the memory of the mysteriously vanished Theodosia Burr Alston.

Go by bus on the Northern Trek, a ride through Laurel Hill down an oak-lined avenue to a cemetery, a Civil War earthen fort site and a crumbling chimney that was once part of a historic rice mill. A high bluff along this route allows for a panoramic vista of the Waccamaw River.

Arboretum

At the garden entrance is Anna’s Don Quixote. Reportedly she asked a servant to find a scrawny horse to serve as a model for Don Quixote’s exhausted mount Rocinante. The servant brought her an emaciated skeleton of a horse, every rib showing beneath a much-afflicted coat, and she nursed the creature back to health while she sculpted her vision of Cervantes’ hero.

Later she added a companion sculpture, Sancho Ponzo, Don Quixote’s long-suffering sidekick, sculpted by C. Paul Jennewein. They stand together at the Arboretum’s entrance, no longer tilting at windmills but instead gazing out from a grove of palm trees and ferns, Quixote anxiously straining forward and Sancho characteristically lounging up against a disinterested donkey.

Marshall Fredericks’ Flying Wild Geese is a miracle of stone in flight, an illusion of airborne geese with a gravity-defying feat of balance supporting them.

Stirling Calder’s Nature’s Dance is a nude woman in white marble stringing a stream of fish from one hand around her thighs and calves, while holding a bird on her head with the other hand. Stirling Calder’s son Alexander is also represented elsewhere in the garden, and his work introduced physical movement to metal wire sculptures and delicately suspended steel shapes that change and respond to even the slightest gust of wind.

Marshall Fredericks created Gazelle Fountain, the gazelle in the act of a move called wheeling, a quick change of direction.

Elliot Offner’s Heron, Grouse and Loon is a flock of large birds that, here again, appear to be supported with only an occasional wing or foot touching the ground to bear the weight of the stone.

Henry Clews, Jr. created The Thinker that, unlike Rodin’s classic masterpiece, is on his feet and walking, with a bit of hovering head gear that looks something like a dish satellite receiver.

Leonda Finke’s Seated Woman wears a peasant dress, closes her eyes and throws her head back as if to soak up the sun.

Richard McDermott Miller’s The Saint James Triad depicts three nude in various poses within a geometric framework.

Veryl Goodnight’s Cares for Her Brothers shows a young girl in bronze tenderly embracing a young deer.

Dogwood Pond

Albert Wein’s Phryne Before the Judges depends heavily on your liberal arts education to make sense of the sculpture. A man standing behind Phryne is removing her robe, revealing all. According to the myth, Phryne was a famed beauty and courtesan brought up on charges of profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries. By some accounts her defense attorney chose the unique legal tactic of removing her robe before the judges as a means of tipping the scales of justice in her favor. In another version of the fable, she tore off her own robe. In any event, she was acquitted.

Willard Hirsch’s Joy of Motherhood balances a curly-haired baby on the knees of a precariously reclining young woman. She dandles her small baby on her knee right at the brink of a vast, dark body of water.

Charles Parks created American St. Francis, a young man with two dogs and a fox, an apparent salute to the Catholic Saint Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals.

Garden Room for Children

Charles Parks also carved Sunflowers to show what it really takes to make flowers grow. Better than water and fertilizer, try seating a child atop the tallest bloom and having that child play the flute to lure the smaller blooms upward.

Rosie Sandifer’s Freedom of Youth captures the flexibility of a young girl who stands on a rope swing, bends over backwards and grasps the upper end of the rope.

Edith B. Parsons sculpted the Frog Baby that now stands at the center of a huge pond, not a frog but a human child with a big, wide, frog-like grin. Elsewhere in the garden is Parsons’ Turtle Baby.

Anna Hyatt Huntington’s Deerhounds Playing is in this area. Like her Fighting Stallions it’s a study in motion and interaction between two muscular animal forms, rendered in excruciating detail.

Marshall Fredericks gives us yet another twist on that old Rodin classic with his version of The Thinker. This one is a monkey with its jubilant gaze directed upward, without question thinking more jubilant thoughts than the original downcast countenance.

Sandy Scott created Eat More Beef long before the Chick Fil-A commercials urged us to eat more chicken. It’s an enormous bronze pig that from the looks of its facial expression shares a similar motivation for its dietary advice.

Marshall Fredericks gives us Mother and Baby Bear leaning up against each other, back to back, their slumped shoulders and weary postures exuding audible sighs.

Anna Hyatt Huntington continues the bear theme with Brown Bears, a threesome that probably cannot be interpreted as a Mama Bear, Papa Bear and Baby Bear.

Richard Recchia continues the theme of playing a tune to flowers with Flute Boy. The child in this case is seemingly intent on playing to real flowers which, in season, would be daisies.

Nancy Reynolds created Happiness in the form of a small bronze child with its arms semi-extended, perhaps to embrace, to gesture, or a motion associated with a dance.

Ernest Bruce Haswell’s Little Lady of the Sea depicts a girl riding a horse, its hind quarters submerged in marble, as if suddenly erupting from the smooth surface of a reflecting pool.

Center Garden

Edmond Amateis created a Pastoral image of a pair of alabaster maidens semi-draped in flowing robes.

Edward McCartan’s Dionysus is one of the signature images of Brookgreen Gardens. Dionysus (or Bacchus) was a major mythological figure, the god of the grape harvest, wine and winemaking, ritual madness and ecstasy, and here he shimmers in bright gold as a tiger wraps around his lower legs and he points his thyrsus, a fennel staff tipped with a pine cone.

Dogwood Garden

A.A. Weinman must have thought of Apollo in his Riders of the Dawn, the sun god who made the daily voyage from horizon to horizon. However, this god is on horseback and the myth described a flaming chariot, so maybe not.

Berthold Nebel’s Nereid is a sea nymph in the Greek tradition. In this image she lounges on the back of a lion and rests an elbow on its head.

Walter Rotan’s Reclining Woman with Gazelle evokes the many occasions when Zeus assumed the form of an animal in order to lie with a beautiful young woman.

Joseph Nicolosi’s Dream continues this theme with a sleeping girl resting her head on the forehead of a doe and encircling an arm around the animal, just as a child might hug a plush toy.

Joseph Renier’s Pomona drapes a wrap around her arms and swivels her torso in a cross-legged position to look over her right shoulder. Pomona was the goddess of fruitful abundance in the Roman religion, and unlike most goddesses she had no Greek counterpart.

Carolina Terrace

Paul Manship’s Actaeon is a running, leaping, gesturing figure flanked by two hound dogs similarly in a headlong rush of forward motion. In mythology Actaeon was a hunter who ran afoul of Diana (or Artemis in the Roman religion). She turned him into a stag and his hunting dogs ripped him to shreds.

Several works by Paul Manship hint at the then-prevailing trend toward modernity and Art Deco. He modeled plants and hair reminiscent of the ancient world of Assyria, and included ancient symbols and forms borrowed from various times and places associated with antiquity.

Manship’s Diana is nearby, Actaeon’s nemesis, her bow drawn and her dog underfoot, both apparently fleeing but turning their heads back toward their pursuer. In fact, Diana – goddess of the hunt and of chastity – makes a record six appearances throughout the gardens, two of them by Anna Hyatt Huntington.

Hope Yandell’s Lioness and Cub portrays a companionable mother and child outing, suitably set against a lush jungle-type backdrop.

Albin Polasek’s Forest Idyl shows a woman holding a young deer in her arms. The little one cranes its neck to nearly touch noses with an older deer standing next to them. An idyl (or idyll) typically evokes the pastoral or rural life, though generally the term is associated with poetry.

Charles Keck’s Fauns at Play is set against a backdrop that is stunning when the azalea and dogwood are in bloom.

Karl Gruppe’s Joy is a crouching alabaster woman, her facial expression not particularly joyous.

Nathaniel Choate’s Alligator Bender is in the pond with Anna Hyatt Huntington’s Alligator Fountain. A young man bends an alligator by holding the gator’s tail in one hand and its snout in the other.

Albin Polasek’s Man Carving His Own Destiny is a clever rendering of what sculptors must feel as they bring a slab of stone to life. This fellow holds a hammer in one hand and a chisel in the other, as he chips his own left leg out of a raw stone slab.

Competing with the artwork is a vivid display of roses, perennials, shrubs and mature trees. Spring is probably the best time to visit this garden, but don’t rule out other seasons when more subtle displays of blooms and color.

Old Kitchen Garden

C. Paul Jennewein’s Nymph and Faun stands against a rustic latticework backdrop, out for a leisurely stroll together atop a low brick pedestal.

Sandy Scott’s Peace Fountain is a flock of doves hovering around a nest holding an orb.

Sea Urchin Garden

Robert Henry Rockwell’s African Elephant roams the jungle with long, sharp tusks.

Edward Berge and Henry Berge collaborated on Sea Urchin, a cherubic child at the center of a fountain, with real swans gliding all around.

Bryant Baker’s The Afternoon of the Faun represents the half-man, half-goat forest spirit associated with the Greek god Pan. Most of the fauns referenced in the names of sculptures in this garden refer to young deer, not to lecherous forest mutants.

Fountain Garden

Carl Milles was commissioned in 1949 to create the Fountain of the Muses for New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. He sculpted a group of figures to depict the muses that brought to the mortals the gifts from the gods: the poet, architect, musician, painter and sculptor, orbiting the figure of Aganippe. In Ovid’s Metamorphosis all forms and beings take on alternate shapes and identities, and according to that source Aganippe was either a nymph or a well. In this famous fountain she is flanked by a centaur and a faun.

The Met soon realized that the weight of the pool posed a structural hazard to its building and determined that the fountain required an outdoor setting. Through the efforts of trustees and curators it was moved, after serving several decades as a centerpiece for one of the world’s best-known and most prestigious art collections.

Wheeler Williams created Neptune as a junior version of the mighty god of the deep. This tyke holds a spear and stands on the water, not yet fearsome enough to sink great ships.

Laura Gardin Fraser’s granite Pegasus is set in a serene pool, the winged horse ridden by Bellerophon, taking flight to go slay the Chimera. That’s probably a fluffy white marble cloud effortlessly supporting horse and rider.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens set his Diana high atop a tall column, balancing on a ball with one foot and drawing her bow and arrow.

Palmetto Garden

Gleb Derujinsky recalls a biblical story with Samson and the Lion at the center of a reflecting pool. God granted Sampson superhuman strength so that he could, among several other things, wrestle a lion. Sampson fared better with the lion than he did with a woman.

Gleb Derujinsky also created Ecstasy consisting of two nude figures engaged in a frantic dance, hair flying, arms flung wildly overhead.

Harriet Hyatt Mayor’s Girl With Fish is a triumphant child holding high a fish that she might have just caught with her bare hands.

Live Oak Allee

The very prestigious Daniel Chester French’s Disarmament depicts a warrior looking down at a small child that clutches at his knees. The world-renowned French is best known for his sculpture of Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Memorial.

Tait McKenzie brought to the garden The Youthful Franklin, a far cry from that image we all have of a paunchy old man wearing bifocal glasses. A young man with his eye to the horizon wears a three-cornered hat and walks with a bag and a rough-hewn staff.

Anna Hyatt Huntington’s Jaguar captures the muscle power and the athletic grace of a big cat. Cats of all sizes assume this pose, an intense focus on something down below, tail twitching, moments before a predatory pounce.

Diana Garden

Anna Hyatt Huntington’s Lion looks like something we’ve seen guarding the entrance of a prominent public building, maybe New York’s Central Library.

Paul Manship Griffin was a mythological beast with the body of a lion and the wings and head of an eagle. The griffin is also a creature reputed to stand guard over valuable treasures.

Anna Hyatt Huntington’s Diana of the Chase poses low on the water, standing on a globe with her dog beside her on its hind legs.

Anne’s Garden

Edward Fenno Hoffman III’s Child of Peace balances on one foot and clutches a dove to his chest.

Dan Ostermiller’s Scratching Doe captures a deer scratching a spot on her neck with a rear leg, in a gesture we’ve all seen in dogs.

Janet Scudder’s Tortoise Fountain is a cherub holding a bow and arrow while landing with one foot on the back of a box turtle.

Indoor exhibits

Buildings have been added as the garden expanded beyond the original core butterfly plan. The Callie and John Rainey Sculpture Pavilion houses two art galleries that host ever-changing exhibits. The buildings themselves are works of art, one of them fronted by a 20-foot long horizontal bronze frieze of ocean waves created by Stanley Bleifeld.

Campbell Center for American Sculpture is out there among the animals. Brown Sculpture Court is near Dogwood Garden.

Keep a sharp eye on this place. Something new is always added to this ancient realm.

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Explore the Brookgreen Gardens
Discover the history, surrounding areas, and attractions of one of the Grand Strand's most sought out attractions, the Brookgreen Gardens.

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