Take a Roadtrip to Wonder—Come Join Our Topiary Fun!

Greenwood’s famous, fabulous topiaries are the colorful stars of the South Carolina Festival of Flowers. They’re making their debut June 1, with a combination of more than 50 old favorites and new beauties. Get a look at how these creatures grow from idea to reality with these behind-the-scenes videos.

A Southeast Tourism Society Top 20 Event, the SC Festival of Flowers began with Flower Day at Park Seed company’s trial gardens. In 1968, Park Seed celebrated its 100th year by joining with the Chamber of Commerce to create the first SC Festival of Flowers.

The festival just keeps getting better every year, and the topiaries are a big reason for its success. You won’t believe the amount of planning, hours, plants, water—and imagination—that goes into each sculpted beauty. And you can learn more about the process through these videos. We hope you’ll come to see us. Until then, here’s the scoop on where these botanical beauties come from.

Beauty by Design

Reeves the Mermaid, Cocky the Gamecock, and all the other topiaries have a team of special caretakers, including horticulturists, master gardeners, volunteers and a visionary designer who helps bring them to leafy, lush life. The original 13 are all still in the lineup: Wrangler, the Jeep; Coco, the Funky Monkey; Gertie the Giraffe and daughter Gidget; Stennolissa the Dolphin, Ari the Lion and her cub Jibari, Princess the Frog, Bubbles the Seahorse, Ali Gator, Milak and baby Horton, Camera (now the Gateway), and the swan, who is now Petey the Peacock.

What else is new? A mushroom village, for starters. And, believe it or not, Pigs are going to fly in Uptown Greenwood!

Sometimes topiaries start out life with a sponsor’s idea. Others have been living in a designer’s imagination for a while, just waiting for an opportunity to show off. For new designs, topiary artist Jimmy McInville, a former Lakelands Master Gardener of the Year, makes a sketch and sends it to the metal fabricator.

Diana Fetters, chief horticultural superintendent, takes pictures of the topiaries every year, to keep up with what they look like and plan the updated “outfits” from year to year. She and the team use Corel Painter to draw new designs on top of last year’s looks. The team keeps pushing the envelope to keep people coming. The Horticulture Department crew leader decides where to place these flowery features around town.

Color Them Gorgeous

Designers make most of the plant choices during the design phase. Topiaries need low-growing (4-6-inch), sun-loving plants that respond well to being trimmed. Volunteers and staff do a lot of the grow-out of plants, propagating existing plants from local stores and home gardens.

Because of that effort, they spent less money this year on plants than any year in the history of the topiaries. In fact, 90 percent of all the plants used are grown in the greenhouse right next door to where the topiaries are built.

Once the frame arrives, the human “stylists” start installing drip irrigation and finalizing the planting plan. It gets hot when the topiaries are out there strutting their stuff. That’s why each topiary has its own internal drip watering system and a controller to keep them fresh throughout the summer. The systems are small hoses that run throughout the topiary, with an emitter every six inches to allow water to drip at 160 gallons per hour. The framework is stuffed with moss as soon as irrigation is complete. Planting begins as soon as propagation can be completed.

Just to give you an idea of how many plants are used, the Gamecock alone takes 30,000 plugs of Alternanthera, while the Turtle requires about 25 succulent plugs.

The staff monitors daily to check moisture, and they have cameras throughout town to check on the topiaries.

Sometimes, topiaries get new names or new looks according to what the sponsor likes. Color changes keep things interesting, often chosen according to the topiary, such as pink for the Flamingo, green for Frog (sporting pink toenails). The swan went from white to pink, then became Petey the Peacock. The tail feathers trailed behind in Petey’s first year; this year, they are in full fan formation. Sometimes designers add colorful plant accents to catch the eye, like a red velvet coleus on top of the Mama Elephant’s head. And Reeves the Mermaid has had a few costume changes through the years!

Sweet Caroline, the butterfly, sported several different color combinations before becoming a monarch this year—a nod to the monarch way stations here in Greenwood.

The Jeep has added a roof of green ficus, the elephant box got a trellis, and the resident Labrador retriever got a bandana and tennis ball. A large succulent on the frog’s head serves as a crown.

“This festival gives us a chance to show off Greenwood to the world,” Diana says. “No other city has topiaries—not Atlanta, not Charlotte. Greenwood does!”

So check out our behind-the-scenes videos to see all the work that goes into getting the topiaries ready for the big show. And plan your Greenwood trip soon. Topiaries are on display beginning June 1, with the big SC Festival of Flowers weekend June 6-9. Topiaries stay out on the town all the way through July 15. They’ll be waiting for you to visit and take selfies. So, catch them while you can.