Created: 04/30/07
Links:
– Newest DaDane
– Previous DaDane
– Archived DaDanes
– Copyright Policy
Available
now
DaDane of DaWeek
T-shirts & Sweatshirts
Coming soon...
DaDane Notecards &
Prints
— BROOKGREEN
GARDENS, Part 3 — April 30, 2007 — We'll expand our visit to Brookgreen Gardens this week with a "virtual tour" of the estate. Louise Peterson focused her attention on the hundreds of figurative sculptures (as any good sculptor would) while I concentrated on my own specialty, botanical photography. Here is my personal view of Brookgreen:
At the Welcome Center,
we were greeted by massive flower beds brimming with bright red tulips.
I took this photo while dodging an unexpected rain shower.
Colors always seem more intense
right after a rain.
Some of the tulip blossoms were
beginning to fade. The brief, but heavy, rainfall did them in.
Louise's life-size bronze,
Bella and the Bug, is installed in a pastoral setting next to a pond.
Earlier that day I spotted a three-foot alligator sunning itself on the shore.
Here is the nameplate that
appears next to Bella and the Bug.
Bella and the Bug was influenced,
Louise tells us, by this small sculpture of a greyhound.
Anna Hyatt Huntington — a
prolific sculptor herself — encouraged, collected
and exhibited the work of many other female sculptors.
This scene lies directly behind
Bella and the Bug, to the left.
Ponds and pools, abundant at
Brookgreen Gardens, enhance its natural beauty.
Having "lived with" an
alligator myself, I particularly enjoyed this monumental sculpture
by Nathaniel Choate. The title? Alligator Bender.
Speaking of alligators, this
one was HUGE! Fortunately, he was just leaving — and so was I.
Brookgreen's botanicals seem
a lot safer. Here we have some wisteria draped over an azalea.
I love wisteria, despite the fact
that it can be quite a pest here in the deep South.
Brookgreen is home to a variety of azaleas, including this one, Rhododendron austrinum, more commonly known as Florida Azalea.
Here you can see two visitors
dwarfed by large masses of azaleas, which are themselves
dwarfed by live oaks (Quercus virginiana) dripping with spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides). Spanish moss is an epiphyte, as opposed to a parasite. It gets its nutrients from the air.
Massive limbs
of a mature live oak, set against a backdrop of white azaleas.
The limbs are covered with resurrection ferns (Polypodium polypodioides). Resurrection fern, like spanish moss, is an epiphyte. Now dormant, it will soon come back to life.
A close-up view of the bark on the trunk of the above tree.
Live oak limbs, on older trees,
often "crawl" along the ground.
This limb undulates among clusters of naturalized daffodils with spent blooms.
Spent blooms can be interesting. I enjoy looking at flowers as they wilt and
die. I find them very sculptural, plus they seem to offer a pleasing metaphor for a life well-lived.
These wilted tulips were found
in the Children's Garden. I spent a lot of time
shooting dying tulips in the Children's Garden. They were just lovely.
A day later, Brookgreen's horticultural staff came through and pulled them
all up. The plants, as seen here, were thown in a pile and tossed out. Farewell. Out of Time ©2002-2008 by Ginnie Saunders. All rights are reserved. No part of this web site may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system — without written permission from Ginnie Saunders. To learn more about copyright issues on the web, visit the Web Law FAQ.
|
