Magnolia Plantation is located 10 miles northwest from downtown Charleston, on highway 61, on the banks of the Ashley River.
It is easy to find, the entrance fee is $15 and the ticket gives you another free entrance if used within one week. The Plantation offers 500 acres
of gardens and grounds to visit, including a 60 acres southern swamp of cypress and tupelo gum trees.
You have to pay different fees if you want to visit the house, take a boat tour, take a train tour inside the gardens.
A large parking lot is at the center of the Plantation, next to the house. The swamp is back next to the highway, the gardens are around the house
on the river side and a waterfowl refuge is at one end of the Plantation along the Ashley River.
Any time of the year some flowers are blooming. The vegetation is dense and is typical of a southern plantation: the 1676
house has white columns, Spanish moss is covering all trees and flowers are everywhere.
At the end of March, when I visited the Plantation, the azaleas were blooming, as well as the jonquils, the pansies and the
poppies. Bushes of azaleas were either pink, white, bright pink or purple. The jonquils were pale yellow. The poppies were magnificent in white,
yellow, orange or red.
Malking around the gardens is a feast for the eyes and a paradise for the photographer. Wide-angle scenes with millions of
flowers, trees with hanging Spanish moss, reflecting pools are everywhere. A macro lens will let you get very close to the flowers and discover a
whole new world.
I went to the waterfowl refuge, on top of the observation tower. In the marsh, ducks are playing with one another. Lots of
different birds fly around. I admit that I don’t know anything about birds, I have a lot of work to do to describe correctly what I am talking about.
Birds look all the same, although they are all different, mostly by their colors.
I went back to the flowers and played with a new lens that has only one point of sharp focus in the picture, not a plane.
It makes some interesting effects of distortions that are not well suited for quiet scenes in a garden. However, a guy was interested by the lens
and started talking to me.
He is a professional photographer in Charleston, and came to Magnolia Plantation to have some fun. Being from there, he has
an annual pass to see the changes in the flowers everyday. He helped me get some pictures with technical information, and we both went to the swamp
area to watch some other birds.
The swamp is filled with water lilies that will bloom later on during the year, around June. Ducks were everywhere. On three
different trees, migratory birds were nesting. They were white, gray and black, probably ibis and herons. At the surface of the black water, a few
alligators were sneaking around quietly. We were walking on the trail going through the swamp, a straight alley not very wide, with the water on both
sides. Between the trail and the water, in other words between the alligators and us, no fence or protection. The first alligator was annoyed by our
presence and went slowly swimming to the middle of the lake, to see how the ducks were doing. The second alligator didn’t want to move. I was able to
take a picture of it from five feet away, the other guy getting even closer. It’s a good thing the alligator was too lazy or not hungry anymore…
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