Mackinac Island is getting a very special horse delivery this week – a breed as unique as the island itself.

Perhaps you’ve seen them – gracing the Tea Garden at the Grand Hotel? The life-size topiary horses, along with a carriage, are ready to make their island debut after wintering in Williamsburg at Mischel’s Greenhouses.

Life is good on the island, says John Mischel, greenhouse owner and horticulturist. Sunny days, cool breezes and humidity are great for their “coats.”

“They came back pretty fat last fall,” Mischel says.

It’s a trip they’ve made for some six years running, since the Mischels took over the topiary’s care for the Grand Hotel – which opened for the season on May 3.

Once back to their winter residence late last fall, some serious grooming was in order – shaved down for a fresh ivy “coat” to grow over the winter. Last week, master gardener Bonnie Hector was busy primping them for the season, just as she’s done every spring since the horses first started coming here.

“I’ve put about 15 hours into them so far, and I’ve still got more work to do,” she told The Ticker. She can’t help but get attached as the horses become more and more lifelike with her handiwork. “Oh, yeah. I talk to them. I call ‘em my lil’ darlings.”

The horses have a steel frame that is covered in chicken wire, lined with sphagnum moss and covered with different varieties of ivy from head to hoof. Achieving the horse shape is mostly a matter of “tucking and weaving,” says Hector. “I actually cut very little of the ivy.” Daylilies are used for their manes and tails.

Mischel isn’t sure but figures the horses are around 30 years old. One year Hector found a “time capsule” in one of the their coats. “It was an old 35mm film canister with a cocktail napkin and some other stuff inside,” she says.

The Mischels’ relationship with the Grand Hotel actually started more than a decade ago, but with a different hotel tradition – the big, red blooms that adorn its famous front porch.

“We were called by the hotel’s grower at the time and asked if we would ever consider growing geraniums for them,” he says.

John and wife Renee have owned the greenhouse business since 1985, moving it to Williamsburg from Byron Center, Mich. in 1995. The woman they bought the business from had been growing geraniums since the 1950s.

“They were her specialty,” says Mischel. “And they’re our bread and butter.” (The greenhouse is primarily a wholesaler but does have a mail-order business.)

The Grand Hotel geraniums are dark red Americana. They are a cutting geranium variety as opposed to seed geraniums, which are smaller and more compact plants.

“They are the Cadillac of geraniums,” says Mischel, marked by their big flowers, nice smell and rain-resistant blooms. “The good, old-fashioned geranium.”

In late fall, the hotel places their plant order with the Mischels for the following season and they get to planting. Annually, on the last weekend in April, the first load of geraniums – some 3,000 plants in all – make their trek to the island. The Mischels drive them to the freight ferry in St. Ignace and send them on their way.

The horses are next up. “My job is to get ‘em to the island looking good,” says Mischel. “They look like new this year!”