One of the great benefits of living in Charleston is the ability to drive 20 minutes and get away from it all. A mini-vacation if-you-will. Right now the urge to get away from it all and escape is nagging at my every thought. Focusing on work has been made impossible by my endless Expedia searches for a quick, cheap getaway. Turns out that summer is NOT the best time to plan a solo vacation with a dog. Prices are skyrocketing daily and the cost of bringing a pup along just puts the nail in the vacation dreams coffin. Enter Magnolia Plantation. Just a 20 minute jaunt from downtown Charleston, but with good tunes turned up, windows down, breeze blowing through your hair (and Wellie’s ears) it really feels like less. Once there you’re transported into a whole other world. A world in which you’re transported back in time when instead of watching mindless tv or scrolling through your iPhone every 5 seconds to amuse oneself you went out into the garden and dug around in the dirt and really became one with nature. In fact while there, I only took my phone out to snap some pics… not once did i check Facebook, instagram, Zite, my email, Linkedin, or any of the other ridiculous things I waste countless hours on.
Growing up I used to help my grandmother in England tend to her garden, which was in my mind the most splendid place in the world. When we weren’t digging around in her garden and picking fresh berries we were making our way though the National Trust gardens on family day trips or traipsing through the bracken (English word for ferns) in the woods with the Dalmatian. Magnolia Plantation is the closest i’ve come in this country to feeling that same sense of peace, tranquility and utter awe at nature’s complex beauty. Strolling though the gardens you come across ponds filled with Alligators, sweeping vistas over looking a quiet little river with bursts of flowers in every possible color framed with Spanish Moss gently swinging from their tree limbs. There’s a pond with the loveliest bridge– a scene straight from Monet’s garden in Giverney– but instead of his signature lily pads there are blue herons wading through grasses. There are swamp lands with yet more Alligators sunning themselves on perches and trees growing up out of the water. I’m not kidding, this place is magical. While there, I kept thinking- I wish everyone I knew got to see how pretty this is because they’re missing out on a truly spectacular display of nature. I keep thinking of the Will Ferrel as Robert Goulet quote: “That’s why I come up here… Nature!”
Anyway, enough rambling… if you’re in the Charleston area GO. I urge you. GO! you can check out their website to see what plants are in bloom each month. Magnolia Plantation
xoxo,
Jenna &
huxton & rycroft 