Paradise Gardens

A museum with big spray, and spiders and mosquitoes and goats and birds. Howard Finster's Paradise Gardens in Summerville, Georgia is an easy drive from Atlanta and Athens. Walking through the swampland imaginarium was dirty, recycled, and beautiful and true.

His work, as seen in museums, loses its splendor when the Paradise isn't sinking into the mud, decaying in the very mud that gave it birth.

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away