In the early 1980s, Pearl Fryar began transforming his home in Bishopville, South Carolina, into a fantastic topiary garden, often using plants rescued from the compost piles of local nurseries.
“I didn’t have any limitations because I really didn’t know anything about horticulture,” he has said. “I just figured I could do whatever I wanted to with any plant I had.”
Fryar died April 4, 2026, at age 86, according to The Post And Courier of Charleston. “The garden is managed by a South Carolina nonprofit whose mission is to preserve Fryar’s artistic and horticultural legacy and provide opportunities for artistic and educational enrichment,” the newspaper reported.
Fryar was the born into sharecropper family in Clinton, North Carolina, that “never had that much.” He worked for a New York bottling company, which later relocated him to the Pee Dee. “He began maintaining his garden in response to rejection from White residents living inside the town limits of Bishopville, who worried about the possibility of a disorderly property in their midst,” The Post And Courier reported.
“The last thing you see before you leave my garden is ‘Love, Peace + Goodwill.’ So now, my garden not only appeals to the eye, but it appeals to you emotionally because you’re going to feel differently when you leave than when you came,” Fryar said in 2017. “My message also is to try to help someone less fortunate. That’s what it’s all about.”
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