November 2022 - Cheekwood
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Top Plant Picks December 2022

Top Plant Picks December 2022

It’s winter and the grounds are changing! Cheekwood’s Horticulturist Sage McClain, shares her top plant picks for December.

Eryngium x zabelii ‘Big Blue’ (Sea Holly)

Bloom Time: June to November

Sun Requirement: Full Sun

Water Requirement: Low

Wildlife: Attracts bees, butterflies, and moths

Tolerates: Dry and poor soils

Native to North America: No

Zones: 4 – 9

Other: This coarse, thistle-like hybrid produces showy blue flowers and bracts that can bloom from summer into the cooler season.

Location: Wills Perennial Garden It’s winter and the grounds are changing! Cheekwood’s Horticulturist Sage McClain, shares her top plant picks for December.

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Agave ovatifolia (Whale’s Tongue Agave)

Bloom Time: Blooms once every 10~ years

Sun Requirement: Full Sun to Light Shade

Water Requirement: Low

Wildlife: Attracts hummingbirds and is deer resistant

Tolerates: Drought tolerant and virtually disease free

Native to North America: No

Zones: 7 – 11

Other: This evergreen succulent is cold tolerant and forms a rosette of thick powdery blue leaves.

Location: Wills Perennial Garden

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Verbesina virginica (Frostweed)

Bloom Time: July to December

Sun Requirement: Part Shade to Full Shade

Water Requirement: Low

Wildlife: A good nectar source for butterflies!

Tolerates: Deer resistant

Native to North America: Yes

Zones: 8 – 11

Other: This native wildflower is a good shade garden addition! During the winter, when the nights get cold enough to frost, the stems exude water that freezes into icy ribbons.

Location: Sculpture Trail

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Hamamelis virginiana ‘Harvest Moon’ (Harvest Moon Witch Hazel)

Bloom Time: October to December

Sun Requirement: Full Sun to Full Shade

Water Requirement: Medium

Wildlife: Birds eat the fruit

Tolerates: Tolerates a range of shade conditions as well as poor soils

Native to North America: Yes

Zones: 3 – 8

Other: This native shrub is a heavy and fragrant bloomer in the fall when many other species are done blooming.

Location: Bracken Foundation Children’s Garden

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Camellia ‘Winter’s Star’ (Winter’s Star Camellia)

Bloom Time: October to December

Sun Requirement: Part Shade

Water Requirement: Medium

Wildlife: Attracts bees

Tolerates: Deer resistant

Native to North America: No

Zones: 7 – 9

Other: This evergreen shrub is valued for its glossy dark green foliage and showy pink autumn flowers. It is an excellent choice as a shrub border or as a specimen plant in a woodland garden.

Location: Japanese Garden

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Ilex verticillata ‘Winter Red’ (Winterberry)

Bloom Time: June to July

Sun Requirement: Full Sun to Part Shade

Water Requirement: Medium to Wet

Wildlife: Berries attract birds

Tolerates: Tolerates erosion, clay soil, air pollution

Native to North America: Yes

Zones: 3 – 9

Other: Winterberries produce attractive red berries that persist throughout the winter. This shrub adds so much interest to the winter landscape!

Location: Bracken Foundation Children’s Garden

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Acer palmatum ‘Bloodgood’ (Japanese Maple)

Bloom Time: April

Sun Requirement: Full Sun to Part Shade

Water Requirement: Medium

Wildlife: No significant value for wildlife

Tolerates: Rabbit resistant

Native to North America: No

Zones: 5 – 8

Other: This small, rounded deciduous tree features deep red to purple foliage and red samaras in late summer to early fall.

Location: Japanese Garden

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Hesperaloe parviflora ‘Desert Flamenco’ (Redflower False Yucca )

Bloom Time: March to November

Sun Requirement: Full Sun

Water Requirement: Low

Wildlife: Flower spikes attract hummingbirds and night-pollinating moths

Tolerates:Heat and drought tolerant and pollution tolerant

Native to North America: Yes

Zones: 5

Other: A wonderful choice for rock gardens! This evergreen forms a basal rosette and the flower stalk rises five feet, bearing showy, coral-colored flowers.

Location: Wills Perennial Garden

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November Volunteer Spotlight

Jenny and Lilly joined Cheekwood’s Family Team program as volunteers in early 2021 and have been active ever since! Being able to provide an opportunity for parent and child to engage in service, is a truly meaningful experience, which carries with it learning, skill development and shared joy. Jenny and Lilly are welcoming and warm to our visitors and families, helping them create fond memories of their visit at Cheekwood. A parent or legal guardian and child aged 10-15 can apply to join our Family Team program. Applications and volunteer information are located at this link: https://cheekwood.site/support/volunteer/
Or for more information: [email protected]

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Tell us a little about yourself, background
Jenny: I grew up in the Nashville area, we currently live in Franklin, TN. I’ve been married to my husband Joseph for 20 years and we have one daughter, Lilly. I have memories of coming to Cheekwood as a child to see the Christmas decorations and bringing my daughter to do art projects here as a preschooler.
Lilly: I was born in Nashville and I am a junior in high school.

What are your favorite hobbies, activities, or interests?
Jenny: Our family loves to travel. Lilly and I like to bake together and go to concerts.
Lilly: I really like listening to and playing music.

What is your favorite garden or area at Cheekwood and Why?
Jenny: I love the Children’s Garden. I think the statues are so whimsical and I love to see the families interacting with and enjoying that space.
Lilly: I like the Water Garden. It’s a great place to spend time.

Do you have a favorite art piece at Cheekwood, or, if not, a favorite exhibition that Cheekwood has hosted? Is there a reason you like it?
Jenny: I loved when the Chihuly exhibit, and the Holiday Lights exhibit overlapped a few years ago. That was so cool to see all the pieces lit up amid the holiday lights.
Lilly: I really liked the Colorscape exhibit this summer.

In what ways have you been involved as a volunteer with Cheekwood so far?
Jenny: We have volunteered as greeters, helped with the Easter Art Hop, Cheekwood Harvest in the pumpkin patch, and at Holiday Lights.

Why did you become a volunteer?
Jenny: We were looking for a place that Lilly and I could regularly volunteer together. We thought about all the places we love to visit that might need volunteers and Cheekwood came to mind. I visited the website and found out they have a family volunteer program, and it was a perfect fit for us.
Lilly: I wanted to find a place to volunteer outdoors, and Cheekwood’s gardens are a great place to do that.

What have you enjoyed the most about your volunteer experience?
Jenny: It’s been so nice to volunteer together, and that probably my favorite part. As your kids get older it can be a little harder to find activities to do together and spending time together volunteering at Cheekwood has been so great. Plus, it’s a lovely place to spend a few hours and everyone is so happy to be there.

Do you have any advice for individuals considering volunteering with Cheekwood?
Jenny: I would highly recommend it. Cheekwood’s Family Volunteer program is a great way to spend time with your family, show your children the importance of supporting their community, and you get to do all this while spending time at one of the most beautiful spots in Nashville.

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Historic Profile: Family Traditions Merged with Timely Customs

“Thanksgiving becomes the American holiday that embraces all that we value.”
James W. Baker, Thanksgiving: The Biography of an American Holiday

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun,
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core….

John Keats, from To Autumn

Family traditions merged with timely customs when Nashville prepared for the annual Thanksgiving holiday on the third Thursday of November. Early in the autumn, questions of whose turn it was to host Thanksgiving this year were settled, and guests invited to Cheekwood would understand that preparations fell mainly to Mabel Cheek as the lady of the house. From childhood in her Clarksville, Tennessee home, Mabel doubtless had observed and participated in the holiday planning. As the mistress of Cheekwood, she would monitor the sumptuous feast at each point of preparation, just as she saw to it that every room sparkled, as did the china, silver, and her favorite ruby-red glassware, with the pristine linens crisp from the flatiron and the table arrangements at the standard of the preeminent country estate. (The guests need not know that Mabel reported on extensive “housekeeping” in a pre-Thanksgiving letter to her daughter, Huldah, who was away at college. “My fifth week with the same general cleaner,” Mabel wrote, also mentioning a seasonal dinner party that anticipated Thanksgiving in the dining room: “The table was beautiful in autumn flowers and fruits.”)

Dining Room in the Cheek Mansion

By the early 1930s when Leslie and Mabel Cheek moved into Cheekwood, few recalled that a “Day of Thanksgiving and Praise” was proclaimed in 1863 by President Abraham Lincoln. The sixteenth US President was esteemed in the northern states that embraced the first Thanksgiving of Pilgrims and Native Americans sharing a meal in social harmony in the Plymouth Colony on the shores of Cape Cod, Massachusetts in 1621. The South, however, took a different view of the inaugural Thanksgiving holiday. A similar feast had occurred two years earlier in 1619 at the Berkeley Plantation in Virginia, and the president of William & Mary College, Lyon G. Tyler, fervently advocated for the South’s preeminence in Thanksgiving.

The Cheeks did not enter into the “First Thanksgiving” debate, but perhaps Mabel realized that volumes purchased for the Cheekwood library linked directly to the development of the national holiday. For $125.00, the Cheeks acquired Godey’s Ladies Books, 1854-1858, thus furnishing their shelves with bound volumes of magazines produced by Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor-in-chief of the first major US magazine for women, Godey’s Ladies Book. According to historian James W. Baker, the widowed Mrs. Hale “began her advocacy of Thanksgiving in 1837” and in the following decades became the “godmother” of Thanksgiving for her campaign to have “the last Thursday in November declared Thanksgiving in every state and Territory.” Apart from Mrs. Hale’s letters to Lincoln promoting the holiday, no direct evidence exists to link the magazine to the President’s proclamation, but her campaign is widely credited as foundational for the creation of the national holiday.

Photo of Table setting

The exact recipes for Thanksgiving fare at Cheekwood may not be fully known. Perhaps Mabel had attended the Centennial Club program, Thanksgiving Menu—demonstration and recipes,” on November 8, 1927. And possibly the Cheekwood kitchen held a copy of Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), principally a cookbook of recipes contributed by ladies throughout the South, including seven recipes for roast turkey.

When the Cheekwood mahogany dining room table was extended to accommodate all guests, rain or shine, on the third Thursday of November, a prayerful thanks was given for a holiday said to be unique to the United States of America.

Blog post provided by Cheekwood’s Writer-in-Residence, Cecelia Tichi, Ph.D.

Cecelia Tichi is an award-winning author and Professor of English and American Studies Emerita at Vanderbilt University. Her books span American literature and culture from colonial days to modern times, but her recent work draws upon the Gilded Age (post-1870) that prompted her book on Jack London and another on seven activists in that tumultuous era.

Cecelia’s research and teaching inspired What Would Mrs. Astor Do? The Essential Guide to the Manners and Mores of the Gilded Age, followed by Gilded Age Cocktails and Jazz Age Cocktails , which set the stage for her mystery crime novels that boast “Gilded” in each title.

Cecelia can be followed on her website: https://cecebooks.com/

Portrait Photo of Cecelia Tichi
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