The Dorothy P. Peace Garden Room for Children at Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina is one of many distinctive theme gardens within the 300-acre public garden created from former 18th and 19th century rice plantations along the Waccamaw River.
When Anne and Archer Huntington acquired the captivating lowcountry property of forest, swamp, rice plantations, and beachfront in the 20th century, the philanthropist and his sculptor wife created a historic landmark outdoor museum displaying American figurative sculpture among native plants and animals.
Art and Nature Playscape
The Peace Garden Room for Children combines the complementary characteristics of art and nature in a playscape. This children’s garden, an acre in size, is laid out in a series of corridors cutting through a dense tapestry of native and exotic plants sharing territory with animal sculpture.
Flora of the Garden Room for Children
A visit to this garden is a whimsical journey among the unusual sizes, shapes, textures, and colors of flowers, fruits, and leaves. Ancient southern live oak trees, Quercus virginiana, draped with epiphytic Spanish moss, Tillandsia usneoides, form the room’s canopy. Another epiphyte grows upon the live oak branches, resurrection fern, Polypodium polypodioides.
During dry weather, the fern is brown and curled up looking dead. After rain or irrigation, leaves turn green, unfurl, and appear to resurrect. One of the loveliest younger deciduous trees growing in the garden is the variegated chinaberry, Melia azedarach ‘Jade Snowflake.’ The cream mottled bi-pinnate green leaves and relaxed growth habit make the tree a piece of surreal art.
Variegated thorny foliage and spikey purple punk flowerhead of the 5-foot tall milk thistle, Silybum marianum, generates interest along the route. The large round glossy green yellow-spotted leopard plant, Fargugium japonicum, appears more docile than ferocious. Grape hollies, Mahonia bealei, bear bunches of blue waxy fruits. A group of sago palm, Cycas revoluta, is a scene from dinosaur days. Platoons of tall flowering foxgloves march in place in the shade of live oaks. Thick towers of pink, white, and blue Canterbury Bells, Campanula medium, chime throughout the garden. The drama changes with the seasons.
Animal Sculptures in the Garden Room for Children
The larger than life scale of the plantings and the variety of species and unusual specimens create suspense along curvilinear paths leading to surprising sculptural destinations: a silver fawn by sculptor Albert Stewart, a pugnacious bronze pig captioned ‘Eat More Beef’ by animal sculptor Sandy Scott, and a giant segmented crawling caterpillar.
Meet fictional character Mowgli from Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book recreated in the bronze ‘Boy and Panther’ by sculptor, Rudulph Evans. Overhead an enormous bat with wing membranes spread looks ready to glide. Escape by hopping aboard a bronze tortoise train with an umbrella-shaded youngster riding the front tortoise.
In the center of a serene circular pond a smiling ‘Frog Baby’ stands on top of a globe delighted to have a frog in each fist. ‘Frog Baby’ by Edith Parsons is a focal point of the collection of small sculpture at Brookgreen. Parsons is said to be adept at imprisoning in bronze the smile of a small child.
You encircle an ancient tree by stepping around the circumference on a circular step way and survey the scenes that surround you. The Peace Garden Room for Children is a place for the young at heart to imagine, pretend, and play.
Sources
- Tour of Brookgreen Gardens, May 1, 2011.
- Phone interview with Brookgreen Marketing Department, May 24, 2011.
- Online website BrookGreen.org. Accessed May 2011.
Arlene Marturano - Arlene Marturano, an educator, consultant, master gardener, and writer advocates gardens as a context and gardening as a tool for ...
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