It is early and the air is filled with the hoots, screeches and hollers of monkeys, apes and birds. I take the modern concrete and steel bridge over the Saluda River where there are five foot tall pots overflowing with flowers and weeping willows, yellow Adirondack chairs and bright blue benches, where you can sit and watch the zip glyders flying across the waters.
There was a covered bridge here built in 1819, but it was destroyed by the Confederate Army in 1865 in an effort to prevent General William Tecomseh Sherman from entering the city of Columbia. Sherman had a floating bridge made from the lumber at the Saluda Mill just a hundred yards up river and Columbia was burned.
The Woodland Trail leaves the path to the right at the far side of the bridge, following the river to a building housing a textile museum. The trail is short and steep from there among mountain like boulders. The reward at the top is the stone entrance to the Botanical Garden. Entering is the intoxicating scent of hundreds of roses. There are spider lilies blooming. There are fountains. There is an Art Garden with a sculpture by Anna Hyatt Huntington of Jaguars on a Tree Stump.
Over the entrance to the Garden House is the inscription:
Care for the Earth As If it Were Our Garden.
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