Remembering South Carolina's topiary artist Pearl Fryar, who died this month at 86

In the 1980s, Pearl Fryar wanted to buy a house in a good neighborhood in South Carolina. A neighbor objected: Black people don't maintain their property. He bought land elsewhere — and then, after 12-hour shifts at a Coca-Cola canning plant, came home and taught himself topiary from a three-minute nursery demonstration. He died this past April at 86, leaving behind three acres of gravity-defying sculptures and a garden the Smithsonian called one of America's great folk art environments. This isn't the kind of story that announces itself as extraordinary. It just is.

Scott Simon / Michael Gibson, NPR
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/18/nx-s1-5786645/remembering-south-carolinas-topiary-artist-pearl-fryar-who-died-this-month-at-86