Pearl Fryar's Garden

Every garden enthusiast that lives in South Carolina knows about Pearl Fryar and his magnificent garden in Bishopville.  He creates wonderful topiary and also has some really nice sculptures throughout the garden.  I will just post the pictures and let them speak for themselves, it's a lovely place. He also has a website Click here to go to Pearl Fryar's Website

I'm sure UPS has no trouble finding this house!

Even the mailbox has verve.

It's hard to see from this angle, but the light pole is inside the tree.

Ode to the Water Oak

I attended a conference yesterday concerning urban trees...and the subject of Water Oaks came up between myself and the guy sitting next to me.  Water Oaks are short lived, as far as oaks go...and they have problems that make them not necessarily great as street trees.  For example, they get massively large and then fall on the nearest house...some people find this upsetting. 

This person told me that in one neighborhood in his town, of 150 trees determined to need removal, 120 of them were Water Oaks.  I wanted to argue with this guy and convince him that Water Oaks still live to be about 80, which is a lot older than me.  And that they are majestic and have character and provide shade and therefore deserve to live despite their faults. 

I began looking at the Water Oaks in my own neighborhood today as I was running, and I noticed that a lot of them really do look terrible.  And I started to think, maybe this guy's right, they are fine in the back yard where they can fall and just take out a shed or above ground pool on the way down but they shouldn't be street trees. 

But then I went past the grand old Water Oak down the street from my house.  She is like a fat, warty old lady, with rolls of blubber melting down and onto the sidewalk.  Her limbs stretch all the way across the street and provide shade to the house on the other side.  She has a beautiful form and a spirit and she has watched a lot of changes on our little street in the last 70 or so years.  I realized that this is the sort of tree I could picture chaining myself to, if I didn't have job security to worry about.  I'm sure that whomever makes decisions such as these can find all sorts of justifications for removal:  the inside is rotten, that limb is at a bad angle, etc... but in the end I hope that the person who takes down a tree like that understands the enormity of what they do. 

Using art to highlight invasive plants

This was originally an idea I had for an art installation at an elementary school.  The school had a long, curving driveway bordered by a slope and some woods, and along that wooded edge were a number of different invasive plants:  Bamboo, Chinese Privet, Mimosa, Kudzu and Russian Olive, to name a few.

The installation concept was to paint the plants along the driveway a bright color - either white, or a neon color.  Something that didn't look natural and made it clear that this plant didn't belong in this setting.  A nice perk is that the paint isn't particularly good for the plant either, and would probably kill it. Painting the plants would also make their physical form easy to see, so that people observing the piece could learn to identify invasive plants.  Ideally, some of the invasives would be left in their natural state in the same area so that people could also see the leaf color, flowers, etc. 

The driveway was a nice viewing platform because the parents sat out there every afternoon waiting for school to end so they could pick up their children.  The installation continued around to an area in the back of the school, encircling the playground.  Here, signage teaching the children about invasive species would be stationed.  The children could learn about the project during school, and then when their parents picked them up and inevitably asked "What's with all the painted plants?", they would explain, bringing the educational component full circle and opening up a forum for discussion with the family. 

I would love to see this idea applied in a more guerrilla style too, along interstates and other roads.  It would be wonderful if a painted plant came to instantly be recognized as an invasive, that doesn't belong.
Aquatic invasive plants could be removed from the water, painted, allowed to dry and then gently replaced, to illustrate this version of the problem.

Below are some pictures of the concept around the elementary school:

Signage along the driveway...part of the initial concept.  Later I decided to move the signage to the playground area, to make it more of a mystery to the parents, that the children would then explain.

This little farm building was adjacent to the playground and had goats.

A model constructed to show the layout around the school.