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It started with the trees. Big live oaks and a tangle of overgrown water oaks all but concealed Wragg Square—a city park donated by the estate of John Wragg in 1801—that stretches in front of Second Presbyterian Church, with its defining historic brick wall and wrought-iron fence fronting Meeting Street. Sitting catty-corner to Marion Square, the heavily limbed park was easily overlooked, but when garden designer Beverly Rivers and sisters Madeleine McGee and Evie McGee Colbert began searching for a tree-centric location for a garden in honor of Evelyn “Patti” McGee, the tree-canopied plot held promise.
“Mom’s beloved garden on Anson Street was a shade garden, beneath a huge live oak,” says Patti’s eldest daughter, Madeleine, chair of the Charleston Horticultural Society as her mother had been (a consummate gardener, Patti also led the Lowcountry Garden Club and was a founding board member of the national Garden Conservancy). “A live oak makes a tough place for planting, but Mom did it. She had nine months to prepare that Loutrell Briggs garden for Evie’s wedding, and she, Beverly, and Sheila [Wertimer] dug in. Mom respected the lines of Briggs’s design but went her own way with the plant material.”
When Patti died in 2022 after a long illness, the honorary garden idea was already sprouting. What Rivers didn’t know when she first suggested Wragg Square was that “Second Pres had been my father’s family church for generations. It was perfect,” Madeleine says. They met with Kronsberg (then with the city) and the Parks Conservancy and designed plans to build upon the partial Wragg Square restoration done in 2016, in partnership with the neighborhood association, for the Peter and Patti McGee Memorial Garden. “We initially envisioned a small install of some of Mom’s favorite plants, but it quickly turned into a whole re-do,” says Madeleine.
The team began by pruning the overgrown trees, then added new lighting, irrigation, a path, and benches, Madeleine’s favorite part—“Charleston benches but with three seats, arranged for a group gathering,” she says. The McGee and Colbert families joined volunteers over a few weeks first to remove existing flora, and then plant new ones—hellebores, autumn fern, camellias, and purple coneflower, along with other perennials, all labeled with their Latin botanical names, “as Mom would have wanted,” says Madeleine. The garden reopened in April 2024, three weeks before Peter McGee died. “We’re so glad he got to see it,” she adds.
Building on the Wragg family’s gift more than a century and a half ago, the McGees/Colberts are the latest in a line of park stewards who see the city’s beautification as their enduring mark. “It’s so rewarding to work in concert with these families and help them realize their goals for their families’ legacy,” says Kronsberg. “Mom opened her home, her garden, and her heart to everyone,” Evie remarked at the park’s opening. “We hope the revitalized Wragg Square will feel just as welcoming.”
The Peter and Patti McGee Memorial Park
342 Meeting St.
Hours: Daily, sunrise to sunset
www.charlestonparksconservancy.org/park-finder/wragg-square/
To see the The Peter and Patti McGee Memorial Garden plant catalog, click here (opens in a new tab).
To read our April 2018 feature profile on Patti McGee, click here.
