The Arboretum in Brookgreen Gardens

The Arboretum in Brookgreen Gardens is a beautiful addition to this incredible site that’s located just minutes away from Myrtle Beach.

At the garden entrance is Anna’s Don Quixote. Reportedly she asked a servant to find a scrawny horse to serve as a model for Don Quixote’s exhausted mount Rocinante. The servant brought her an emaciated skeleton of a horse, every rib showing beneath a much-afflicted coat, and she nursed the creature back to health while she sculpted her vision of Cervantes’ hero.

Later she added a companion sculpture, Sancho Ponzo, Don Quixote’s long-suffering sidekick, sculpted by C. Paul Jennewein. They stand together at the Arboretum’s entrance, no longer tilting at windmills but instead gazing out from a grove of palm trees and ferns, Quixote anxiously straining forward and Sancho characteristically lounging up against a disinterested donkey.

Marshall Fredericks’ Flying Wild Geese is a miracle of stone in flight, an illusion of airborne geese with a gravity-defying feat of balance supporting them.

Stirling Calder’s Nature’s Dance is a nude woman in white marble stringing a stream of fish from one hand around her thighs and calves while holding a bird on her head with the other hand. Stirling Calder’s son Alexander is also represented elsewhere in the garden, and his work introduced physical movement to metal wire sculptures and delicately suspended steel shapes that change and respond to even the slightest gust of wind.

Marshall Fredericks created Gazelle Fountain, the gazelle in the act of a move called wheeling, a quick change of direction.

Elliot Offner’s Heron, Grouse, and Loon is a flock of large birds that, here again, appear to be supported with only an occasional wing or foot touching the ground to bear the weight of the stone.

Henry Clews, Jr. created The Thinker that, unlike Rodin’s classic masterpiece, is on his feet and walking, with a bit of hovering headgear that looks something like a dish satellite receiver.

Leonda Finke’s Seated Woman wears a peasant dress, closes her eyes and throws her head back as if to soak up the sun.

Richard McDermott Miller’s The Saint James Triad depicts three nudes in various poses within a geometric framework.

Veryl Goodnight’s Cares for Her Brothers shows a young girl in bronze tenderly embracing a young deer.