Make Your Own Nashville Garden Tour

As a new gardener, I love seeing professional gardens in bloom.

Local gardens show me exactly which plants work in Brentwood and Nashville.

Here are a few local spots where gardeners can go for inspiration…

 

For starters, the demonstration gardens at Ellington Agricultural Center are gorgeous.

They’re planted by Master Gardeners and by Tennessee agricultural experts.

I never would have imagined a rustic arbor lush with…bean plants.

My kids would love a backyard hideaway like this–and perhaps they’d even eat the beans!

 

 

This sunny perennial garden outside the Tennessee Agricultural Museum even has labels for amateurs like me.

I love the contrast of blue salvia against the stone edging and gravel path.

 

 

Ellington’s gardeners worked their magic on another vine-covered archway. This one marks the entrance to a colorful perennial garden bright with coneflowers.

 

 

When I think of herb gardens, I imagine formal parterres lined with boxwood. That magazine image has always kept me from designing my own.

Ellington’s log cabin garden showed me that herbs look just as beautiful in a casual, stone-bordered setting.

 

 

 

Here is another local herb garden, this one from the Grassmere Historic Farm at the Nashville Zoo.

I love the local limestone used as crazy paving in the center.

 

 

 

What to do with an old stump? The Master Gardeners at the Grassmere Farm made a stump into a birdbath with this beautiful concrete basin. Again, totally do-able idea for the average Nashville gardener!

 

 

I knew I could use this homemade tomato cage for my potted cherry tomato plant.

I snapped a photo so I could remember how it was made when I returned from the Nashville Zoo.

 

 

Other great gardens near Brentwood that you can use for inspiration:

• Carnton Plantation’s restored 1847 garden, which now offers formal tours
• The boxwood lined gardens at Traveler’s Rest and the Belle Meade Mansion
• The Bicentennial Mall’s Walkway of the Counties, which features the native plants of Tennessee
• Cheekwood Botanical Gardens in Belle Meade