Roads
DOT will remove trees along Highway 17 at Brookgreen
The state Department of Transportation is due to start work Monday to cut and trim trees along the shoulder of Highway 17 in front of Brookgreen Gardens.
The month-long project along a stretch of about 2.5 miles will remove trees that are leaning or hanging over the highway. But other trees – a mix of oaks, pines and maples – that are within 30 feet of the center line of the two southbound lanes will also be cut, said Miles Arnott, vice president of horticulture at Brookgreen.
He started working with DOT last year to identify the trees that would be removed.
“We contacted them knowing that we had issues,” Arnott said. Those were exacerbated by storms last year, including a microburst that caused extensive damage to the sculpture garden.
There have been instances where trees have fallen in the highway, said Lauren Joseph, vice president of marketing at Brookgreen.
“It’s absolutely a safety issue,” she said.
The work won’t affect the trees, primarily live oaks, that are part of the landscaped entrance to Brookgreen. “They are under instructions not to cut those,” Arnott said. Any stray limbs will be handled by Brookgreen’s arborists.
But some large oaks along the highway, some with branches that nearly span both southbound lanes, will disappear.
“For the most part, they’re all in rough shape,” Arnott said. “They can’t be saved.”
He made two trips along the project area, from just north of Wesley Road to just south of Sandy Island Road, with Timmy Britt, DOT’s resident engineer, to confirm the scope of the project.
At one large live oak, Arnott pointed to the dead wood on the trunk just below a limb that stretches over the highway. He said it made him nervous to stand underneath the limb.
“People don’t see that driving by at 70 miles an hour,” he said.
Joseph expects the sight of trees coming down will raise public concerns. When Brookgreen obtained a variance from Georgetown County in 2023 to cut four trees within the building envelope of a planned 10,000-square-foot conservatory, there were complaints.
“It is going to be slightly jarring to people,” Arnott said. “I understand that.”
But he pointed out that clearing the area close to the highway will benefit the next row of trees on the 7,000-acre tract, trees that are growing straight.
“This is one of those cases where you need to see the trees, not just the forest,” Joseph said.
