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A Cut Above
It wasn’t a horticulturist who guided Pearl Fryar’s early years as a topiary artist. It was determination. Denied entry into an all-white neighborhood by residents who protested that a black man wouldn’t maintain his yard, Fryar toiled each night—after completing a twelve-hour shift at a can factory in Bishopville, South Carolina—to transform three and a half acres of farmland into a wonderland of sculpted firs, oaks, and pines. Twenty-five years later, the self-taught artist has become a gardening legend, and thousands of visitors still come from far and wide to admire his work.
Now available on DVD, the documentary A Man Named Pearl chronicles Fryar’s journey and reminds us all that potential doesn’t require a pedigree. “It wasn’t important for me to create a garden,” he says in the film. “I wanted to create a feeling, that when you walked through, you felt differently than when you started.”
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