Something's Afoot in the Lowcountry: Earth Day in Hampton County
Journalist, author and historian Michael DeWitt Jr. will be hiking the highways, byways, and waterways of lower South Carolina for his new health, travel and lifestyle column.
EARTH DAY, APRIL 22, 2025
DESTINATION: BEN HAZEL ROAD, LITTER CLEANUP
LITTER COLLECTION: 21 bags
DISTANCE: 1.4 miles
STEPS: 1,904
DURATION: 1 hour, 22 minutes
Any archeologist worth his shovel would say that you can learn much about a civilization by digging through its garbage.
But you can learn more by looking at where that garbage is located, and who cares enough to clean it up.
It's Earth Day, and I, along with almost a score of other volunteers, am walking the roughly 1.6 mile stretch of Ben Hazel Road in Hampton for The Seed and Weed Garden Club's Annual Litter Pickup.
To kick the event off, Joan Brown, President of the Seed and Weed Garden Club, presented a short program on the history and need for Earth Day.
"Gardens are more than just pretty places," said Mrs. Brown, "they help the Earth."
Participants were given a small notebook and bracelet, courtesy of Palmetto Pride, to commemorate the special day.
The safety and orientation meeting was entertaining yet serious: don't pick up dead animals, syringes, suspicious looking fluids, etc. Here are some gloves if you want them. Wisely, I took the gloves, as well as a handy metal "picker upper" and a bright orange safety vest.
As I expected, it was an exercise-filled, eye-opening experience. For the first few hundred yards, I collected what seemed like hundreds of plastic/foam "packing peanuts" that somehow escaped from someone's Amazon package.
Then, there were the endless cigarette butts, mixed with the occasional used plastic vape device, discarded lottery tickets, crushed beer cans and intact beer bottles, food containers, and sun-faded junk mail envelopes.
There was even a small sheet of roofing tin and a couple of sizeable pieces of vehicle window glass to collect. But the prize of the day was an entire white, porcelain toilet that someone had thrown out from a vehicle onto the roadside, where it broke into several pieces.
The chore was brightened by the discovery that blackberries, a childhood favorite of mine, were beginning to ripen along the roadside, and the sight of two healthy whitetail deer jumped out of the woods just yards ahead of us.
At the end of the event, 18 volunteers, including garden club members, officers of the Hampton County Sheriff's Office, Town of Hampton Mayor Robert Brown (along with his daughter and two granddaughters), and James Bostick, a Hampton County High School sophomore earning Beta Club service hours, collected 21 orange bags of roadside litter on only one rural highway.
Those bags, along with the toilet and other items too large to bag, would be picked up later by the local S.C. Department of Transportation crews.
All because one group of Hampton County ladies cared enough to do something for our local corner of the Earth.
Not just any old garden club
Earth Day was first celebrated in the United States on April 22, 1970, to increase public awareness of the world's environmental problems.
That was 55 years ago, almost three years before I was born.
But this garden club is even older than that. The Seed and Weed Garden Club was organized in May 1950 and was federated in May of 1952.
Despite its age and tradition, the Seed and Weed strives to be vested in young people and the future of the community at large.
Here is just a snapshot of how this club spends its volunteer hours. The Seed and Weed Garden Club:
Sponsors a scholarship to Camp Wildwood at Kings Mountain each year.
Makes an annual donation to Katie’s Krops, whose flagship gardens are in Summerville, S.C.
Collects and donates funds to the local 4-H Club .
Maintains the Memory Garden at the end of Lee Avenue, regularly refreshing it with various flowers and decorating it with specific themes.
Sponsors a Youth Club, the Sprouts. The Seed and Weed Club mentors these young people by interacting with them five times a year.
Hosts different activities during National Garden Week, which is always the first full week in June. These activities include sponsoring a Plant Swap on Lee Avenue; making and delivering arrangements to local banks, neighboring hospitals, the Hampton Town Hall, and the Hampton County Library; visiting Lowcountry Assisted Living to pot flowers and interact with residents; starting a Seed Library at the local library branches; and cleaning, cutting and planting wild flowers at the Town of Hampton Nature Trail.
Participates in “Plant It Pink” each October to raise awareness of breast cancer. This includes planting and decorating their Memory Garden at the end of Lee Avenue with everything pink and holding a reception for breast cancer survivors to connect with each other. Their largest project, this event takes several months to organize and execute.
Holds monthly meetings (September through May) with informative programs to which they bring lovely arrangements and horticulture and share their love of gardening.
Won numerous awards at the district and state levels for their projects throughout the years, including First Place in the small club division of the South Atlantic Region (which is made up of five states) for its “Plant It Pink” activities in 2023, and also received two certificates of appreciation from the National Garden Club for award participation in two categories.
The club currently has 16 members:
Joan Brown
Ellen Ayer
Adrienne Rizer
Mary Benton
Dawn Winn
Mederia Stanley
Carol Priester
Marie Benton
Nichole Dinkel
Elisabeth Christie
Bonnie Tuten
Beth Rizer
Chelsey McGee
Linda Terry
Sharon Foster
Ann Womble
(The Seed and Weed Garden Club was recently recognized by the Hampton County Council.)
Where do we walk, and clean up, next?
The Seed and Weed Garden Club's first Litter Pickup was on Earth Day 2024, but the club is committed to picking up Ben Hazel Road twice a year. An Adopt-A-Highway sign was erected in their honor along that road in December 2024.
There are a lot of winding roads in Hampton County, but imagine what good we could do if every family, group, organization or church adopted just one stretch of highway to keep clean.
If your group is holding a litter cleanup event, or you are simply looking for someone to walk with you for exercise, or to share a story or some local history, please get in touch with me via email or Facebook.
Where will we walk next?