The Magnolia Gardens

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXVIII, Issue 3484, 30 August 1937, Page 2

The Magnolia Gardens

Condensed from "Good Housekeeping."

There is not anywhere, so far as I can learn (writes James C. Derieux, in the “Good Housekeeping” journal) a monument to the Rev. John GrlrakeDrayton, Yet Mr. Drayton did one of the remarkable bits of work that has been done in this w r orld. About bis country home, Magnolia Gardens, near Charleston, S.C., (U.S.A.), he brought into being such beauty as perhaps no other Individual in America has been able to achieve. Each spring thousands of persons travel hundreds of miles to seek the work of this modest clergyman, sick from tuberculosis. In a pre-war edition of his famous travel guide, Baedecker marked but three places in the United States with the double star: the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, and Mr. Drayton’s garden. Said John Galsworthy: “Nothing so lovely and wistful, nothing so richly colored, yet so ghostlike, exists, planted by the sons of men. Beyond anything I have ever seen, it is otherworldly. To this day I have seen no garden so beautiful as Magnolia Gardens." I shall not even attempt to tell of the millions of azalea blooms of many hues; of the stately camellias, la single bush yielding blooms of many colors; of the white and bluish wistaria climbing to the very tops of mighty trees; the roses; the Magnolia grandiflora; the live oaks with their eerie draperies of gray moss; the mirroring pools. Acre after acre of rapturous beauty, changing from hour to hour as the sun’s angle alters, from ■week to week as the season advances. There seems no end to the clergyman’s desire to make manifest here on earth some hint of the heavenly glimpses that came to his heart. Last summer an elderly woman leaving Magnolia Gardens said, "This is my fortieth visit here. I come each spring to South Carolina to see Magnolia. It restores my soul."

Another woman said to Mr. C. Norwood Hastie, present owner of the garden and grandson of Mr. Drapton: “My husband, a clergyman, was on the teetering edge of losing his reason when he first came here. Day after day he returned. In the end, his faith returned to him, and his poise. This garden saved him, made it possible for him to continue in his pastorate.” Innumerable persons, afflicted with grief too heavy for them, go to Magnolia to find peace. A man stood looking across one of the small lakes at banks of color, at the clear reflections of that color beneath water. Softly he spoke to the woman with him. “I know now what Heaven is like, and I am content for my child to be there.”

Sometimes persons who enter the garden burst into quiet tears. Sometimes they gasp, when they behold the blooms as numerous as the stars, sit down and remain immovable for minutes. There is no record of any person ever having been ejected from the garden for misconduct. Rarely does one hear loud talking or noisy laughter—no more than In a cathedral. As many as 12,000 persons have entered the parden within a single day—and when night came on, no flowers were missing, no damage of any kind had been done, no litter left. Yet there never are guards on duty. One day Mr. Hastie himself went out to gather flowers. Twenty persons started towards him. “Stop that!” they demanded. Now when he wishes flowers for his own use, he gathers them before the gates have been opened.

There is many a garden within 50 miles of Magnolia that has been despoiled by visitors. But there is something about Magnolia that puts thievery and all other low conduct out at one’s mind. “Dis gyrden ain't fo’ sin,” is the way an old negro explains it. “Gawd, He done walk here." In the heart of every imaginative person resides a desire to be of lasting worth. But what can he do that will survive him If he has access to a bit of earth, this he can make lovely, and so add immensely to his own satisfaction with life and to the joy of others.

The village in which I now live, Summerville, S.C., is one of several established by the rice planters of the eai-ly 19th century. Most of these settlements have pined away, some of them have disappeared, but Summerville is living merrily, though it has no industry to speak of, and is not a trading centre. Why did Summerville survive? Because many years ago it had intelligence enough to prohibit the cutting of trees, and its home owners aesthetic sense enough to plant wistaria, roses, tea olives, magnolias, azaleas, camellias, and Innumerable other flowering trees, vine and bushes. To this day one may not cut a tree in Summerville, though it is in his own yard, without permission of the town authorities. Now the huge wistaria vines spread over the tops of tall trees, roofing the village with heavenly blueness, while the floor of the forest flames in many flower colors. It is beauty that sustains the community, that brings to it annually hundreds of -winter residents, some of whom, having travelled widely, declare it to be America’s loveliest forest village.