Pearl Fryar

Pearl Fryar was born on December 4, 1939, in Clinton, North Carolina, to a sharecropper family. In the late 1950s, he attended the North Carolina College in Durham. He served in the military and was in the Korean War. After leaving the military, he moved to Queens, New York. In 1975, he began work as a factory engineer at a Coca-Cola soda can factory in Bishopville until his retirement in 2006. In 2006, the documentary A Man Named Pearl was produced by Scott Galloway and Brent Pierson about his work. Fryar died at his home in Bishopville, South Carolina, on April 4, 2026, at the age of 86. == Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden ==

Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden is a three acre garden located in Bishopville, South Carolina. Fryar's garden contains over 400 individual plants and is integrated with "junk art" sculptures. The aesthetics of Fryar's work are a departure from traditional topiary work and are considered abstract, inventive, and free-form. In 2007, the Friends of Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden and the Garden Conservancy formed a partnership with Fryar to preserve and maintain the Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden and to further Fryar's message of inspiration and hope. In 2008, a scholarship was created by Fryar and the Friends of Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden to provide for students with lower grades. In 2021, Mike Gibson, a topiary artist from Youngstown, Ohio who had first met Fryar in 2016, began tending the garden due to Fryar's declining health and the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time his position was funded by a $50,000 Central Carolina Community Foundation grant. During 2020–2022, a new nonprofit, The Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden, Inc. was established to work collaboratively and support the preservation of the artistic and horticultural legacy of Pearl Fryar. == Awards and accolades ==

• "The Heart Garden" collaboration with Philip Simmons for Spoleto Festival USA's "Human/Nature" installations (1997) == References ==