Next Stop - Leland, North Carolina

This is my second visit to my friend in Leland over the last 2 1/2 years. Last time I was here, we visited local gardens and the seacoast. This time, we decided to go to a place called Brookgreen Gardens, actually in the Myrtle Beach area of South Carolina.

This is actually a pretty amazing place. I'm copying (just below) something about the history of how it was founded.

"When Archer Huntington and noted sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington, his wife, purchased property in South Carolina in 1930, the original idea was to build a retreat from the world while Anna, who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis, recovered her strength. However, 18 months later, on July 13, 1931, the property was incorporated under the laws of South Carolina as a private, not-for-profit corporation entitled "Brookgreen Gardens, A Society for Southeastern Flora and Fauna."

From its inception, Brookgreen had a three-pronged purpose: first, to collect, exhibit, and preserve American figurative sculpture; second, to collect, exhibit, and preserve the plants of the Southeast; and third, to collect, exhibit, and preserve the animals of the Southeast. Collecting and exhibiting, it became the first public sculpture garden in America. Today it is the finest outdoor museum of its type in the world. (source: Robin R. Salmon, Brookgreen Gardens, Arcadia Press, 2006, p. 7)"

The property that now comprises Brookgreen Gardens was originally four rice plantations. According to what I could find, in includes about 9,100 acres, with a much smaller part developed now in three area: the botanical/sculpture gardens, the low country area, and the animal reserve area (zoo and habitats).

The Gardens help fulfill the first two parts of the purpose of Brookgreen as mentioned above: sculpture and plants of the southeast.

Here is a picture of the friend with whom I was staying and myself, and a few of the many pictures of the gardens (I'm embarrassed to say how many) pictures I took as we wandered. You can see a few of the many outdoor sculptures scattered throughout.

There are a LOT of artists represented throughout the site, but in one of the actual galleries we saw works by Grainger McKoy (1947 - ) who seems to derive his inspiration from the dynamics of the movements of birds. I have never seen sculpture quite like this. It's one thing to sculpt a bird, but entirely different to do so in a manner that makes one imagine that it is already in motion. I apologize for the deficiencies in the photographs, but the gallery was not set up in a way to really facilitate getting just the sculpture into the picture (without people or reflections). Even so, I think you will be able to see what I mean.

We next moved over to the Low Country area. We looked out over the former sites of the rice paddies that were here in the 19th century, saw the remains of some of the slave quarters, and saw what the land and plants looked like during the site's earlier days.

And a short video looking out over what was part of the plantation rice paddies.

Our final stop was in the animal preserve area. There is a zoo that includes the same types of animals that would have been on the plantations during that period of time.

We then moved into the animal habitats area. Unfortunately, my phone battery dies a short time before reaching the end of the habitats. If I can get my friend to provide some of his pictures, I will add them later. In the meantime, here is a start. [There is one new area dedicated to the preservation of wolves indigenous to this part of the country. I'm very sorry to have missed getting pictures there; wolves (and owls) are my spirit animals.]