Beautification and Community Greening
Research has shown that people are less likely to litter in attractive, well maintained areas. Keep the Midlands Beautiful therefore regularly obtains grant funding to help beautify the Midlands by adding trees and other landscaping in areas in need of attention. Below are a few examples of these efforts.
2025-2026 “Greetings From” Mural Project
Sponsored by PalmettoPride, Keep America Beautiful and…You? In preparation for America’s 250th birthday in July, 2026, we want to make our communities as beautiful and as welcoming as possible. We are currently seeking sponsors for “Greetings From” murals to be installed in all 19 of the municipalities we serve across Lexington and Richland counties. Each mural will have the town or city’s name in block letters with graphics representative of the municipality, the county, and our beautiful state. See example below.
- To learn more and to apply for a mural on behalf of a municipality, complete this Mural Application Form or contact Lexy Johnson at ajohnson@kmbsc.org or (803) 733-1139.
- For information about sponsorship opportunities, complete this Sponsorship Form or contact Traude Sander, Executive Director at tsander@kmbsc.org or (803) 733-1139.
2025 Mural Project
Sponsored by PalmettoPride One mural, designed and painted by local artist Jahnna Blyden, has been installed in the City of Cayce on the One Love convenience store external wall. The mural incorporates a faceless figure to represent the community and multiple symbols to represent aspects of Columbia and South Carolina in an effort to instill pride in the place where we all live, work and play. Following the mural’s installation, Cayce’s Code Enforcement Officer, Councilman Byron Thomas (who was instrumental in bringing this mural to Cayce), the Brookland Cayce Sustainability Club, and Keep the Midlands Beautiful held a community litter pickup removing over 110 pounds of litter from the surrounding area.
2023 and 2024 MLK Beautification Project
Sponsored by Melius Forum, Keep America Beautiful and Central SC Habitat for Humanity
Residents who attended a free, four-hour class on how and why to maintain their homes in order to make them less attractive to criminals were eligible to apply for our assistance. We spent $30,000 in grant funds improving the exterior safety and appearance of 11 homes of elderly and disabled residents. We installed and fixed ramps, railings, porches, decks, and fences, installed security cameras and lights, raked leaves, trimmed trees, planted flowers, and more!
2022 Tree Planting at Beechwood Middle School
Sponsored by Nucor Building Systems
Nucor donated trees to Green Step Schools two years in a row and helped us plant them.
2021 Tree Planting in Columbia’s North of Main (NOMA) District
Sponsored by the Arbor Day Foundation and Bank of America
We used a $50,000 grant to plant trees, bushes, and flowers in Columbia’s ‘North of Main’ (NOMA) district and provided training on environmental justice for at risk youth who helped to plant the trees.
2019 Tree Planting
Sponsored by TD Bank
