Carolina Terrace at Brookgreen Gardens

The Carolina Terrace at Brookgreen Gardens is a gorgeous component of this famed Myrtle Beach attraction and features a world of world-class statues and sculptures.

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.