Christy Buchanan's SHE Garden & Gallery

Christy Buchanan is a renaissance woman. She’s an architect and a professor as well as an artist and a folk art enthusiast. Many years ago, after visiting the famed Howard Finster’s Paradise Gardens, Buchanan was inspired to create her own folk art environment.

She wanted her space to reflect life’s beauty—the familiar beauty found in nature and the more nuanced beauty of everyday found objects. It’s a whimsical and delightful space, overflowing with flower and herb gardens and quirky art sculptures. Buchanan is constantly creating new pieces so you can return to the SHE garden year after year and always see something new. The SHE garden includes the recently-erected “World’s Tallest, but Smallest Art Gallery,” everyone’s favorite Thelma & Louise car, and a bottle house worthy of a magazine spread.

You can have a picnic in the Love Shack, take pictures under the bicycle arch, or commune with the ancestors in the Tiki hut. If you’re lucky, her fluff ball of a dog Dirty Harry will be stalking the koi pond. He’s yet to catch dinner, but he’s ever-vigilant.

Buchanan’s house was built in 1938 out of Winnsboro Blue Granite. Blue Granite was quarried in Fairfield County, South Carolina from 1883 to 1946 and was used in buildings all over the Eastern seaboard, including the South Carolina Statehouse. Many homes in Winnsboro are built with Blue Granite.

Don’t miss the art studio and gallery. It’s a world unto itself. If her SUV, Happy, is in the yard, Buchanan home. But stop by even if she isn’t. Bring a picnic and enjoy everything that this crazy, roller-coaster of a life has to offer.