This garden artist is bringing topiary—and its life lessons—to communities across the South

Columbia, South Carolina, topiary artist Michael P. Gibson’s style is all his own.

“I need to find a way to make people happy—not just by what I create, but by teaching them how to create,” says topiary artist Michael P. Gibson.

That’s because he knows better than anyone how impactful sculpting nature can be. “Topiary is something that should be taught at a younger age, just the philosophy of it,” Gibson says. “There are so many life lessons: It teaches you patience and how to focus… I was a troubled kid in school and was always getting suspended, and you know, topiary was something of an escape.”

With a certificate of mastery in therapeutic horticulture, he now schools students of all ages, using this practice as a catalyst for healing. He’s also currently working on a new sensory garden at Edisto Discovery Park in Columbia, South Carolina, where visitors can come to learn and connect with nature and—hopefully—take a bit of that wonder home with them too.

It’s a fitting development for Gibson, who’s been dedicated to making things more beautiful for as long as he can recall—a passion that he credits to his father (an artist) and his mother (a cosmetologist). “My parents instilled this creative bug in me,” he says of growing up in Youngstown, Ohio. “They both showed me how to think outside the box.”

His father, a Navy veteran, also passed down his appreciation for a precisely manicured yard. Gibson became comfortable with shears early: He was clipping shrubs at 7 years old and cutting hair soon after. In high school, he mowed lawns and trimmed hedges to make extra cash, but it wasn’t really about the money. “It became therapeutic for me at a young age,” he says.

He continued doing yard work through college and then whenever he had spare time during his various sales jobs. He mowed lawns and cleaned gutters, but his real interest was delighting his customers by transforming their overgrown bushes.

By 2014, Gibson was seeing his “property art” as a way to inspire the people of Youngstown, who were working toward revitalizing the local economy. “There was all this blight—but all this beauty,” he remembers. “I saw blank canvases.” He set out on a mission to produce 330 topiaries, a number referencing his hometown’s area code, and started documenting his pieces.

A couple of years into honing his craft, Gibson—who had until then focused on cultivating his own ideas rather than studying those who had come before him—discovered South Carolina topiary pioneer Pearl Fryar, another self-taught Black artist with similar talent and vision.

“I was doing some really great designs, but then I stumbled across Pearl Fryar, and that changed my life,” he says of his first visit to Fryar’s legendary Bishopville garden in 2016. Gibson emphasized the sentiment in a tribute to the creative after he passed away in April, calling him “an integral part to my story and career.”

An eager recipient of the more experienced artist’s deep knowledge, Gibson took a few trips back and forth between Bishopville and Youngstown, learning everything he could. Then, in 2021, he became the artist in residence there. He relocated his family to nearby Columbia and spent a year reviving the Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden, which had been in decline due to Fryar’s health.

That position, plus an appearance on the HGTV competition show Clipped, secured Gibson’s place as a standout in his own right. He began traveling around the country giving lectures and offering his expertise to museums and other organizations—work that he’s continuing these days through partnerships with places like Edisto Discovery Park. As for what comes next, he hopes to one day establish an institute and apprenticeship program to train the next generation.

“I always say, ‘I can’t be everywhere, but if I teach people how to do topiary, it creates a domino effect when they go back to their neighborhoods,’” Gibson explains. “Beautiful neighborhoods domino into beautiful cities, beautiful states, and a more beautiful country.”