Welcoming ghosts and goblins to the Botanical Garden
October 2007
Christine Drais, public relations director for the South Carolina Botanical Garden, will summon up extraordinary courage when area ghosts and goblins arrive for an evening of storytelling around the fire at the Hunt Cabin.
All brave souls are invited to the Ghost Story Festival, from 3:30 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 30, to listen to spooky tales and go on creepy crawly adventures sure to get you in the Halloween spirit. Amateur storytellers are welcome to spin their best yarn for the crowd.
This free program at the Hunt Cabin, sponsored by the Sprouting Wings program, will also feature hot apple cider and open-hearth cooking demonstrations.
It’s this kind of programming that makes Drais’ day, working in a venue that’s open 365 of them a year. Yes, the South Carolina Botanical Garden is open every day from sunrise to sunset, and there is almost always something going on.
“The Hayden Conference Center is used almost every day for meetings and retreats,” says Drais, “and we have weddings every weekend during warmer months.”
Drais is also curator of the gallery in the Fran Hanson Discovery Center, which functions as a visitors center for the area. She says she “couldn’t have picked a better program” when she enrolled for graduate studies in Clemson’s parks, recreation and tourism management department. Drais will graduate in December, earning a master’s degree with a concentration in travel and tourism.
She has done a bit of travel herself since moving as a child from Toledo to Daytona Beach. “It was a memorable trip,” says Drais. “I celebrated my 10th birthday in Tennessee, on the way to Florida.”
She later earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Central Florida in Orlando before relocating to a decidedly different climate in Seattle. There she enjoyed a career as a floral designer with her own business.
It was a 1997 family reunion on Lake Keowee that drew her attention to this area. Ironically, Clemson is where she had originally wanted to go to college. A year later, she moved south.
During her seven years at the University, Drais has seen the Botanical Garden bloom, literally and figuratively, with new display gardens, habitats, nature-based sculptures and complimentary programming to inform the experienced gardener and nature lover and to entice the novice.
“The South Carolina Botanical Garden is a wonderful 300-acre park at your disposal,” says Drais. “We want everyone to come and enjoy all it has to offer.”
Learn more about the South Carolina Botanical Garden online.
The gallery at the Fran Hanson Discovery Center is currently featuring “Rocking, Turning and Shooting,” an exhibition of hand carved and turned rocking chairs by Jerry Melton, hand-turned bowls by Warren Carpenter and photographs by Jim Fanning.
The Campbell Geology Museum is also located in the garden.
Beth Jarrard, public information director for internal communications, can be reached at Inside@clemson.edu or (864) 656-3860.