Brookgreen Gardens

Wow! Talk about gar­dens on a grand scale! Brook Green gar­dens in South Car­oli­na offers up over fifty acres of gar­dens, sculp­ture and excur­sions. From the whim­si­cal Mus­es gar­den to the wildlife excur­sions, these gar­dens are well worth the trip. Feel free to ask the staff ques­tions as you go through — they freely shared every­thing from plant­i­ng tips to show­ing us the largest grasshop­per I’ve ever seen! The best thing? Admis­sion buys a tick­et good for six days.

Gar­dens

Divid­ed into gar­den “rooms”, the lay­out fol­lows the same design Anna Hyatt Hunt­ing­ton envi­sioned in 1931. One of my favorites: the Live Oak Allee, filled with ancient oaks, Span­ish moss and park bench­es to rest while plot­ting which room to vis­it next.

Each gar­den room includes at least one fea­ture sculp­ture, and often has a num­ber of plaques and sculp­tures on the side paths. Sev­er­al rooms include large pools and foun­tains to show­case larg­er sculptures.

Plant iden­ti­fiers are spot­ty through­out — you may have to track down a staff mem­ber to iden­ti­fy a plant you would like for your gar­den. That said, every per­son we encoun­tered glad­ly shared the infor­ma­tion, along with guide­lines for care and planting.

Sculp­ture

The Hunt­ing­ton sculp­ture gar­den is Amer­i­ca’s first pub­lic sculp­ture gar­den. Opened in 1932, it appears on the Nation­al His­toric Reg­is­ter and now has over 1,200 sculp­tures in its col­lec­tion. Work­shops and events through­out the year may offer added inter­est for sched­ul­ing your vis­it. Our vis­it coin­cid­ed the the 75th anniver­sary, so a spe­cial “75 sculp­tures for the 75th anniver­sary” was still in progress.

Most sculp­tures are on a grand scale — rang­ing great­ly in style. Many art deco influ­ences appear with the larg­er stone sculp­tures. The bronzes range from whim­si­cal to more clas­sic style. Sev­er­al pieces by Anna Hyatt Hunt­ing­ton are installed.

Excur­sions

Our group did­n’t take excur­sions — learn from our mis­take: buy the tick­ets ear­ly! They sell out quick­ly, and excur­sions are lim­it­ed. The avail­able tours include a creek boat cruise past aban­doned rice fields (now with riv­er otters and alli­ga­tors- oh my!) and the Trekker Excur­sion on all ter­rain vehi­cles tour the his­to­ry of a rice plan­ta­tion. The Low­coun­try Zoo is the only zoo on the coast of the Car­oli­nas accred­it­ed by the Asso­ci­a­tion of Zoos and Aquar­i­ums. All of the ani­mals in the zoo were either res­cued or bred in cap­tiv­i­ty, and could not sur­vive in the wild.

Oth­er tips

The food through­out the park is def­i­nite­ly South­ern, and the qual­i­ty for the price was pret­ty good. The gift shop offers many unique items — every­thing from art prints, books, jew­el­ry & the usu­al T‑shirt offer­ings. It also had a good selec­tion of fun things for your gar­den back home — def­i­nite­ly worth the time to look.

How to get there

Brook­green Gar­dens is loca­tion on U.S. Hwy. 17 between Myr­tle Beach and Paw­leys Island, South Car­oli­na. 1–800-849‑1931 or Email: info@brookgreen.org