S' Wanderful

It’s funny how little you know about a place even though you’ve been there numerous times.

Having been to Sumter, SC, on many occasions for work, I’ve passed under the footbridge on Liberty Street but never taken a gander at what lay beyond the fences.

To my surprise, behind the tall black fences lays a 120-acre garden, the Swan Lake-Iris Gardens, that contains all manners of flora, from camellias, to day lilies, to azaleas. But the most prized of them all, are the Japanese iris.

Swan Lake was never meant to become an iris garden and has been called by Southern Living Magazine a “lovely mistake.”

Hamilton Carr Bland first tried planting Japanese iris at his home in the 1920’s. After several unsuccessful attempts at getting them to bloom, Bland had the iris bulbs dug up and dumped into some swamp land.

The following spring to Bland’s surprise, the bulbs burst from the ground into what would become the Swan Lake-Iris Gardens.

But if the flora doesn’t impress you, the fauna definitely will.

Swan Lake is home to all eight species of swans from five continents. The first swans, Australian Black Swans, arrived in the 1920’s and the collection became complete with the addition of Bewick Swans in 1977.

The collection includes Royal Mutes Swans, Black Necked Swans, Coscoroba Swans, Whooper Swans, Trumpeter Swans, Black Australian Swans, Whistler Swans and Bewick Swans.

The birds and their waterfowl brethren are amazing to see. 

Over the course of several days, I visited the lake at different times, gathering video and pictures of these beautiful creatures. And I’m convinced that swans only do two things: eat and groom themselves.

(If they’re not doing those two things, it’s because they’re in transition from one to the other.)

They’re magnificent to watch as their heads and necks disappear under the water to feed on the vegetation at the bottom of the lake. Their bodies floating on the surface like a fishing bobber, mooning awestruck visitors. As they surface, water droplets dripping from the bills glisten in the late afternoon sunlight.

I think half my pictures and the majority of the video I shot in Sumter comes Swan Lake.

My only wish is that I would have found what lay on either side of that footbridge sooner.

For Swan Lake-Iris Gardens, truly is S’ Marvelous.