Rock Quarry Garden

A minivan was barreling up the avenue when it came to an abrupt stop. The driver pulled into an adjacent driveway, got out, and walked purposefully towards me. He was wearing a tuxedo and an agitated expression. "Is this 200 McDaniel?" he asked in heavily accented English. "No," I replied slowly, taking in the harried face and the wild curls blowing around on his head. "Well, where is it please?" he asked.

I could see he was losing patience, looking at his watch, and I almost expected him to burst out with "Oh my ears and whiskers," à la the White Rabbit of Alice in Wonderland. After a quick exchange it became clear he was looking for the Rock Quarry Garden, a popular destination for outdoor weddings.

You can probably guess what I was thinking, dear reader. Here is the groom, desperately late, not even knowing where he is to wed his beloved. Eager to assist in the romantic notion, I turned him around and pointed him in the right direction.

A few minutes later, I followed, burning with curiosity. 

I walked along McDaniel, below Knoxville Terrace, where the main parts of Cleveland Park spread off to the left and right. One side would take me past the zoo and tennis courts and end at the new playground for pups. The other, past rocky shoals and the SC Governor's School for the Arts & Humanities, connects to Falls Park surrounding the Liberty Bridge.

With such delightful destinations in store, it is no wonder that many native-born Greenvillians don't know about the Rock Quarry Garden or its many charms that lie just beyond those two entrances. But if you keep going straight down the Avenue, you'll see the steps that lead down into the garden.

So named for the actual granite quarry that operated there in antebellum days, the public space underwent a beautification six years after local resident, William Choice Cleveland, bequeathed 110 acres to the city in 1924. That's when the Greenville Garden Club applied their time, talent, and toil to the scrubby bowl of earth, filled only with squat rocks of all sizes.

The ladies of the Garden Club planted firs, dogwoods, and a chionanthus tree, which blooms like a puff of cotton candy in the spring. They tucked shrubs of leather leaf mahonia and nandina with showy plump berries under the trees. They commissioned curved stone benches flecked with glittering mica for visitors to contemplate the sound of water and the stillness of a spot that lies almost hidden from the street, with its low stone wall obscuring all but the tops of branches and that flat expanse of boulders slick with water flowing from a tributary of the Reedy River.

Reminiscent of a Japanese garden, the creek bed is filled with tumbled rocks, and a stone footbridge straddles the verdant banks at one end. From here the eye naturally follows the water, babbling and chattering away from its source, the waterfall, the jewel in the garden's crown. 

Many couples exchange vows, framed by the sound and spectacle of this small natural wonder. It is where the couple being married today was standing, as I spied them from the bottom step. Alas, the groom was not the gentleman I'd helped twenty minutes before. That man was seated off to the side, his curly head bent in concentration, as his fingers deftly made their way up and down the neck of a cello, coaxing out the strains of a Bach composition to waft in the air above the assembled guests. Children, unrelated to the wedding party, stopped their game of "troll," creeping along the underside of the bridge. Another couple, stretched out on a blanket, paused their picnic lunch as well. For a magical few moments, all were in thrall to the cellist, whose only accompaniment was the gurgle of the water and the whisper of the branches. 

The next time you are in the neighborhood, I do hope you'll take some time and discover it for yourself.