Town Golf Links and think that The Greenery is simply tasked with maintaining them. In fact, those geraniums are planted fresh every year for the tournament, a task that requires extensive advance planning. “We do the designs for the color around Harbour Town eight to nine months in advance,” Seasonal Color Manager Christina Harden said. “The designs, the orders, the scheduling, all of that happens then. It takes a long time for our growers to procure plants and then begin growing them three to four months in advance.” Those famous Heritage geraniums are grown in South Carolina, especially for the tournament, in coordination with The Greenery. Planted around the first week in January, they are grown under painstakingly precise conditions to ensure that they’ll be at their peak of beauty once Heritage rolls around. “We’re constantly watching the weather—not just the week or two before, but months before,” Hilton Head Regional Manager Jim van Dijk said. “Christina and her team do a lot of communicating with our plant vendors, and if we see the weather is going to do one thing or another that may force the plants to mature faster, we communicate on changing the greenhouse conditions. We require a specific window on how they’re grown and when they will be at full color impact.” As tireless as they are in ensuring a perfect bloom every
It takes a long time for our growers to procure plants and then begin growing them three to four months in advance.
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eritage week, in general, is the busiest time of the year on Hilton Head Island. For Lee Edwards, that’s been true since he was a kid selling lemonade along the eighteenth fairway. “I made $100 over the course of three to four days, which is a fortune for an eight-year-old,” he said. His juice-slinging days might be behind him, but as president and CEO of The Greenery, he’s still finding a way to clean up at the Heritage. It’s just that these days, the cleaning up is slightly more literal. “During the tournament, we have people out there from 5 a.m. to 2 a.m. landscaping, cleaning, emptying garbage cans, keeping the Harbour Town area clean, swapping out flowers … it’s something we’re excited about,” he said. “We’re proud of it.” For years, the RBC Heritage has brought the eyes of the world and the cameras of CBS television to Sea Pines, showcasing our lush natural beauty. And for years, The Greenery has made it their mission to make that lush natural beauty the star of the show. Every crisply-edged flower bed, every delicate geranium that lights up TV screens is the result of nearly a year’s worth of effort on the part of The Greenery. “It starts off basically at the end of the Heritage,” Field Operations Manager Allan Klingel said. “We try to go through everything we did last year and make it better for the following year.” You may notice the geraniums lining the fairways of Harbour
Preparations for the color in Sea Pines begin months in advance.