Local SEO Seabrook Island

SEABROOK ISLAND — Mary Johnson’s garden has seen better days.

Her plot, No. 23 in this island’s community garden, was just this summer bursting with herbs, flowers and tomatoes of all varieties. Now, it’s riddled with dollarweed. Tomato stakes lie across an empty planting bed, and moss grows on the wood and chicken wire gate.

Next year, “when I get my garden back,” Johnson said, she would switch out her old, black tomato pots for some new red ones. She had plans to build new raised planting beds with the help of another gardener.

But it’s not clear if Johnson, 75, will be allowed to return, because of a rule change that requires gardeners to also be property owners. She has lived on the island for 14 years as a renter, gardening the entire time, and was told in October that she would have to forfeit the plot.

“I was devastated,” Johnson said. “For three days, I didn’t go out of the house. I was so — I couldn’t tell you how bad it was. I was falling apart, and it still hurts. I love my garden.”

Johnson’s removal hasn’t only affected her life. It’s caused an uproar among many of her fellow gardeners, who solicited her growing advice, and her friends around the island, who would often find a gift of some of Johnson’s extra produce sitting on their doorsteps.

And Johnson, who is of African and Cherokee descent, said she’s felt a cold reception as a guest in Seabrook’s private club and in other gathering places on the island. Though she’s not the only non-white gardener, Johnson couldn’t help but wonder if race played a factor in the changes.

“People just look at you like you’re strange, you know?” Johnson said of some people around the island. “Like, I can’t believe this is happening in 2018, people looking at people for their color.”

Representatives of Seabrook’s Property Owners Association, which claims domain over everything behind the island’s gates, said they had no idea one of the gardeners would be affected by the rule change. They noted the new policy was in line with the island’s other amenities, which are completely or partially reserved for property owners.

They denied that race played any part in the management of the garden.

Fellow gardeners are still pushing for Johnson to return. As of Friday evening, 77 people had signed an online petition for her to get the plot back, and several people had sent letters to the POA.

So far, the panel has denied proposals to grant an exception.

‘A great ambassador’

Johnson is in part a popular member of the gardening community because she was raised with an intimate knowledge of how to live off the land and is generous with her wealth of information.

She grew up as one of 12 on a farm in Leesburg, N.C. Her father’s cash crop was tobacco, but on her family’s own plot, they grew everything they might need, even milling corn for flour.

“We loved working out in the fields,” Johnson said. “We’d work at night, until 6 or 7 p.m., and then the stuff we picked, we’d have to sit on the back porch and string the beans and do all that stuff, getting ready for my mom to can. I look back now, those were the good old days.”

Johnson left the farm at 18 for Baltimore, where two of her sisters were living, and she eventually fell into a career working for AT&T. That work, combined with a job cleaning houses, paid for private school and college for her son and daughter and ultimately for her five grandchildren as well.

After retirement, Johnson landed in Seabrook, and said she liked the community for how quiet it was and how safe she felt there. Her grandchildren liked to visit, too.

Johnson started gardening at her community plot almost immediately, and soon amassed a large group of friends. Among them was Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland County.

Jackson and Johnson became so close that she helped convince him to stay on the island about seven years ago, when Jackson, who is also black, was considering finding a vacation home in a more diverse location. (Seabrook has 1,714 residents, according to the Census Bureau. Only 34 of them are black.)

Jackson said the garden decision was a mistake in part because of how well Mary has represented the island.

“I think Mary is a great ambassador for (Seabrook),” Jackson said. “I’m not saying they are doing this because she’s African-American, but I’m saying they are not taking advantage of the fact that she is African-American.”

He said the entire episode has encouraged him to revisit legislation he’s filed in previous legislative sessions, to increase controls over property ownership groups.

‘An oversight’

When the community garden was started 20 years ago, Seabrook’s POA didn’t have much say in how it was run. Gardeners worked that out among themselves, said Charley Moore, a longtime member who keeps bees.

But over the past year, the private group that runs the gated island took an increased interest because it paid for a new fence and the garden was technically on their land, Moore said. Heather Paton, the executive director of the POA, said some gardeners had wanted clarity about the rules.

There’s disagreement about how the property ownership stipulation made it into the final policy. Moore said that was a specific request of the POA; Paton and Janet Gorski, a member of the POA board, said that was something that the gardeners introduced.

Gorski said the property ownership stipulation didn’t strike her as strange because many other amenities are reserved only for property owners (among the island’s 2,600 properties, there are only about 60 long-term renters, Paton said). Paton also said that 21 people are on the waiting list for a plot, and that the change meant property owners get first dibs.

Either way, Moore, who helped draft the new rules, said he regretted the change.

“The ones of us that were instrumental putting that together did not even consider the fact that one of us was not a property owner,” said Moore, who is trying to get Johnson reinstated. “That was our mistake. That was an oversight.”

For the gardeners not involved in the rules process, the policies were presented after little input, said Lynn Kennedy, who has her own plot. In the late summer, everyone at the garden was told to sign a form, agreeing to the new rules.

“We were informed one time of the agreement, made some protests, and never heard anything again,” Kennedy said. “We weren’t given a choice. It was like, ‘You sign the document or you get off your lot.’ There was no democratic process here​.”

Several attempts to get the board to reverse its decision have not worked thus far. Gorski said that these proposals have been too broad and might have allowed people who neither lived nor owned land on the island to use the garden.

But, she said, another proposal could always come before the board meets again on Jan. 14.

“I don’t understand that this is 100 percent closed, and I think that the board is usually open to making sure that the problems the community is having get resolved,” Gorski said. “It’s hard to figure out an exception that works for one individual that doesn’t have unintentional consequences.”

Reach Chloe Johnson at 843-735-9985. Follow her on Twitter @_ChloeAJ.

Seabrook Island

SEABROOK ISLAND

SOUTH CAROLINA

1 pm: 18-holes on Crooked Oaks course

7 pm: Drinks & dinner at The Club

Natural Oceanfront Living Only Minutes From Historic Charleston. Charleston’s Only Truly Private Oceanfront Island Club Community.

36 Holes of Audubon-certified Championship Golf | Nationally-acclaimed Tennis Center with Pickleball

Full-service Equestrian Center offering Beach & Trail Rides | State-of-the-Art Fitness Complex

3 1/2 Miles of Uncrowded Beaches | Deepwater Marina & more...

Published by LINKS Magazine. View All Articles.

This page can be found at https://mydigitalpublication.com/article/Seabrook+Island/3561453/642119/article.html.

This South Carolina spot leaves travelers fully immersed in nature

I’m on my second loop around the southern point of Seabrook Island in South Carolina, about a half-hour south of Charleston, pedaling along the wide bends. It’s June. Gray-green wisps taper from the branches of massive live oaks—trees that have survived hurricanes and civil war. An egret loiters in the driveway of a huge blue house on a corner lot with a wrap-around porch. Sightseeing is what you make of it on Seabrook.

As I ride to the corner of High Hammock and Seabrook Island roads, a young couple and a tall, middle-aged man have gathered at the edge of a pond. They’re bending low, pointing at the water. I steer toward them and coast to a stop.

“You see the gator?” the tall man asks me.

I see a log.

He motions me closer. I leave my bike and walk to the water’s edge where the man hunches down so his shoulder is at my eye-level. “He’s way out in the back there,” he says, pointing. “See his nose?”

I see it now: a half-submerged head, then nostrils, floating, just across the pond. To get a closer look, I trespass through the yard of an octagon-shaped rental on stilts. Beach towels sunbathe on the deck. Now I’m less than five feet from two eyes that don’t acknowledge me.

I think about how the reptile lives, about how long it’s been here. I think about reaching out to snap a photo. And the value of my arm. When I look up, the couple and the tall man have left, and I soon realize I’ve spent nearly an hour with this jagged creature that will not move and has no interest in me. And I’m okay with that.

Seabrook Island isn’t a place you go to check off boxes from a list on a tourism website. There are no “must-see attractions” or billboards with directives. There are no Rainforest Cafes, no chains at all, except a couple of stores at Freshfields Village, a swanky shopping area just outside the Seabrook gate, which it shares with neighboring Johns and Kiawah islands. It’s not loud. It’s not crowded. It’s a slow-moving place where the charm lies in what it isn’t—a place where four strangers consider scouting gators an acceptable way to pass a morning.

The island is named for the Seabrook family, beginning with Robert Seabrook, an English businessman who traveled to present-day Charleston at the end of the 17th century.

Despite a conviction for trading with pirates, he amassed a fortune and thousands of acres of coastal land. By the 1800s, the area’s fertile soil yielded industry crops: rice, cotton, indigo. Later the next century, the town was incorporated and developed into the private golf, tennis, and equestrian community it is today.

Most of this I learn aboard a ferryboat with South Carolina native Jon Rood. Once a ranger at Congaree National Park, he also worked in archaeology, and now he’s an eco-tour guide. He talks fast, with energy that’s rare for someone who’s given these tours for more than two decades. Walls of windswept spartina—cordgrass that forms along coastal salt marshes—frame the route as we glide to the high point of the ride: an eagles’ nest atop a tree at the end of a secluded cove.

On the way back, Rood hands me a few clear, plastic bags, each filled with relics from the past—a Revolutionary War bullet casing, a small shard of ochre pottery. We talk about the soldiers who marched here, and the indigenous people thousands of years before that. A shallow dig at Seabrook’s Bohicket Marina today would unearth the same. “Here, there’s not a piece of ground that someone hasn’t been on before you,” he says. “Archeology gives you a sense of place. If you don’t know what you’re looking at, it’s hard to appreciate. I think people do want to appreciate things.”

Later that evening, as I walk along the quiet beach, I notice that the footpath lamps are dim and covered with mushroom-shaped domes. A plaque along the walk tells me that it’s because misguided (and endangered) Loggerhead turtles sometimes mistake the path lights for moonlight and lay their eggs too far from shore. Most mornings you can find the “Seabrook Island Turtle Patrol” in bright green T-shirts searching for tracks or nests or helping hatched babies find their ways back to the ocean. They appreciate turtles.

Lynda Fox, a retired veterinarian and full-time Seabrook resident, keeps an annual wildlife summary so the island can track the health of its ecosystem. Last year, there were 158 bobcat sightings—fewer than in 2012, but more than the two years before that combined.

Eagles and dolphins showed up. It wasn’t a great year to see the gray fox. But there were 10 sea otter-sightings, a piebald fawn, and minks, among others. The Island Connection reports these numbers like most cities run crime statistics.

Of course Seabrook has golf courses—and both were the first in the state to earn the Audubon Society’s Cooperative Sanctuary distinction, meaning the course operations don’t upset the natural wildlife habitats. There’s bird-watching and preservation through the Natural History Group, in a town of fewer than 2,000 full-time residents. Pelicans probably outnumber people. But unusual birds—grebes and ospreys—are around, too. About 80 species, including threatened and endangered birds, are often spotted on the island. Local nature photographer Charles Moore’s impressive shots of great egrets and blue herons line the greeting-card holder at the grocery store. And it’s one of the few spots along the East Coast where, legally, you can ride your horse on the beach.

The next morning, very few people are at Freshfields. The seaside air is muggy and thick. I sip coffee in the courtyard and watch the busy birds. A black seabird darts by with a twig in its beak, stopping on an iron lamppost. The twig falls. The bird looks around, spastic and confused.

I hear a voice. “He’s so little!” says a young girl, distracting me from the bird’s plight. She’s peering inside the purple-and-white tissue box her friend is holding. The girl holding the box wears a T-shirt that reads Naturalist in bold letters. She looks like she’s playing a wooden labyrinth game as she tilts the box this way and that to give her friend a better look.

“It looks like he still has the umbilical cord attached—you sure he’s even alive?” the girl asks her friend.

I have to see what’s inside. I walk up and ask the Naturalist. She tilts the tissue box my way, revealing a tiny, still-pink critter, creepier than it is cute. “It’s a baby raccoon!” she says.

“You think it’s going to be OK?” I ask.

“Yeah. I’m trying to find a rehabilitation center, but I think they’re all closed Sundays,” she says.

I wish her luck and head inside for a refill. When I come back outside, the girls have left. I’m on my own, headed back into the Seabrook wild.

In-Person Absentee Voting has started in South Carolina. There are currently two places you can vote In-Person and beginning October 19, 2020, there will be three additional locations.

• Board of Election Headquarters – started In-Person Absentee Voting October 5.
• North Charleston Coliseum – started In-Person Absentee Voting October 5.
• Main Library Downtown – will start In-Person Absentee Voting October 19.
• Seacoast Church West Ashley – will start In-Person Absentee Voting October 19.
• Seacoast Church Mt. Pleasant – will start In-Person Absentee Voting October 19.

Because space is limited at their headquarters office, the Board of Elections recommends that absentee voters use one of the other four locations.

To vote In-Person Absentee, you need to bring:

• If you have your absentee ballot, bring it completed, signed, and witnessed to one of the above locations on one of the specified dates.
• If you don’t have an absentee ballot, go to one of the above locations on one of the specified dates with a valid photo ID. Click here for more details about photo ID requirements.

To obtain the addresses and hours of the locations, click here.

For more information about voting In-Person Absentee voting, as well as detailed information about the locations, click here.

–Tidelines Editors

(Image credit: scvotes.gov)