Photo by Milton Morris
Sidney Frazier
Hometown: Johns Island.
Claim to fame: He’s the master gardener and the vice-president of horticulture at Middleton Place (middletonplace.org), where he earned the moniker King of Camellias.
Planting the seed: Raised Baptist, Frazier founded a nondenominational church, Full Faith Ministries, on Johns Island, where he serves as senior pastor.
Favorite hobby: Fishing. His prize catch is a 28-inch spottail bass.
Co-op affiliation: Frazier is a member of Berkeley Electric Cooperative.
Every gardener appreciates the beauty found in each of the four seasons, but for Sidney Frazier, master gardener at Middleton Place, spring is always a special time of year.
“It’s joy,” says the man known as the King of Camellias. “Everything is starting to burst into color. It’s like a fresh start again.”
For nearly 50 years, Frazier has been digging, pruning and tending to the plants at Middleton Place, the colonial-era plantation on the Ashley River, with the oldest landscaped gardens in America. His love of plants began while growing up on James Island, working alongside his grandparents. Maybelle and Herbert Lee Frazier, he says, were “modern-day sharecroppers” who grew “everything you’d find in your grocery store” and instilled in him the value of hard work.
“If you want to move up in life and be successful, be respectful and value whatever you do,” Frazier says. “If you’re going to do something, put your all into it. Don’t just do it to get by.”
Frazier took a summer job at Middleton Place in 1974 and promptly fell in love with the classical gardens that date back to 1741 and its 10,000 camellias, 100,000 azaleas, and countless hydrangeas, crepe myrtles and magnolias. He joined the staff full time in 1978 and today walks the paths beneath giants he planted as a teenager.
His favorite plant is the winter-flowering camellia japonica, particularly the Reine des Fleurs variety, believed to be the nation’s oldest camellia, planted in 1786. The “Queen of Flowers” was a gift from the French botanist André Michaux to the Middleton family. Frazier has ensured the queen’s legacy by successfully propagating the cultivar year after year.
Now 64, Frazier is contemplating retirement, but a part of him will always be rooted at Middleton Place.
“I want to retire early enough to be able to enjoy this garden and see the benefit of what I’ve done,” he says. “I still have the same joy and enthusiasm walking through this garden today that I had over 40 years ago. This will always be part of my life.”