The French connection: New mural at Charleston airport honors influential 1700s botanist Andre Michaux

By Adam Parker,
The Post and Courier

It’s hard to imagine it, but a couple of centuries ago the land on which the Charleston International Airport now sits was the French Botanic Garden, established by the famous botanist Andre Michaux.

Michaux, born and raised at Versailles, spent about 20 years in the United States when it was newborn. He came primarily to collect trees to replace those France had lost to clearcutting for ship building and waging war.

Michaux set up a nursery in what is now Hoboken, N.J. He got to know Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and the English botanist John Bartram.

In 1786 he came to Charleston, introducing the area to the camellia, crape myrtle, gingko, mimosa tree, tea plant, and pomegranate, and where he collected South Carolina specimens — rhododendrons, Oconee bells, Carolina lilies, wild azaleas, oak, maple, magnolia and other trees — for shipment to France.

In botany circles, his adventuresome work in the fledgling U.S. has become the stuff of legend. And now Michaux will be commemorated with a huge mural by local artist Karl Beckwith Smith, to be installed in a prominent place at the Charleston International Airport.

The work was commissioned by the small nonprofit Friends of Andre Michaux, which has been working for about nine years on the project, hoping to raise Michaux’s profile at the airport. Last year, when Jenny Sanford served as chairwoman of the Aviation Authority’s art committee, Smith contacted her (they knew one another because of a previous art project) and proposed a Michaux mural. It was a happy coincidence: Smith and his advocates wanted the mural displayed at the airport; the airport, under renovation, needed some art.

       
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