A Man Named Pearl
- July
- 15
Pearl Fryar simply wanted to win Yard of the Month from the local garden club, becoming the first African-American to get the honor.
He and his wife, Metra, had been stung by a racist remark — “Black people don’t keep up their yards” — after looking for a house, their first, in a white neighborhood in Bishopville, S.C. So they bought a simple brick ranch in an outlying black neighborhood and Pearl, the son of sharecroppers, set about creating a garden any neighborhood would be proud of.
(Photos courtesy of Shadow Distribution)
Some 30 years later, he’s won worldwide acclaim as a self-taught topiary artist, and his 3.5-acre fairytale garden draws about 5,000 visitors a year, bringing much-needed tourist dollars to rural Lee County, the poorest in the state.

At 7:30 p.m. tomorrow , Fryar will host a preview screening of a new documentary about his life, “A Man Named Pearl,” at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville.
Here’s a link to the rest of my story in today’s Journal News.
If you go
• “A Man Named Pearl,” 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jacob Burns Film Center, 364 Manville Road, Pleasantville. Tickets: $6 for members of the film center and the Garden Conservancy, $10 for nonmembers.
• “The Art of Topiary,” 3 p.m. Thursday, Arthur and Janet Ross Lecture Hall, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx River Parkway at Fordham Road, Bronx. The hour-long lecture is free with admission to the garden (grounds-only pass: $6, $3 for seniors and students; all-garden pass: $20, $18 for seniors and students).








Bill Cary grew up in Louisville, Ky. His gardening was limited to growing parsley and impatiens on the windowsill of Manhattan walkups until the mid-1990s when he bought a rundown old chicken farm on 8 acres in the Hudson Valley. Now he spends his weekends chasing deer, hacking away at invasive shrubs and vines and wondering why he doesn`t have more meadow and less lawn.






