For 66 years, Cheekwood Estate & Gardens has been a treasured place where art, culture, history, and nature come together for families, students, and visitors from Tennessee and around the world.
For the Nashville Rose Society, Cheekwood has been our home for as long as most of our members can remember. It is where we gather for many of our meetings, host our Nashville Rose Shows, and share our passion for roses with the public. Through its partnership with our society, Cheekwood helps educate visitors and members alike about our national flower—the rose.
Today, Cheekwood faces a significant challenge. A formal legal appeal has been filed with the Metro Board of Zoning Appeals seeking to require the city to issue a Stop Work Order that would halt further work and public use of portions of the property. The appeal stems from Cheekwood’s plans to construct a new parking garage, a project that has been opposed by a group of neighbors.
If you would like to learn more about the issue and support Cheekwood, please click hereto read about the situation and consider adding your name to the petition.
On this episode of the Rose Chat Podcast, host Teresa Byington chats with Ron Daniels, a Nashville Rose Society Master Rosarian, former president of the NRS, and longtime volunteer.
Ron oversees the society’s garden project at Cheekwood Estate & Gardens, where the study garden recently underwent a major renovation.
In this conversation, Ron shares the story behind the renovation, the challenges and opportunities involved, and how the garden will be used by the Nashville Rose Society.
Monday, April 27, 2026, was a perfect day to work in the Cheekwood Rose Study Garden. The garden is now going full bore in its new home behind Massey Hall.
The three rose beds were mulched, die-back pruned, and watered. A new rose, Orange Glow Knock Out, was added to the garden. The Peggy Martins planted on the wall below the garden has grown over into the RSG site – beautiful!
by Liz Louie, Co-President, Nashville Rose Society Layout of new Rose Study Garden (thanks to Karin Bailey)
Since 1981, Cheekwood has had a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to use Metro Parks land for overflow parking. The MOU will no longer be renewed after December 31, 2027.
As a result, the two rose beds that comprise the rose study garden needed a new location. Earlier in the year, Cheekwood reached out to inform the Nashville Rose Society (NRS) about the plans for the new Parking Pavilion and Welcome Plaza. Jane MacLeod, Cheekwood’s President and CEO, came to the September NRS meeting to present an informative history of Cheekwood and discuss the new plans for the Parking Pavilion.
The new location for the Rose Study Garden will be three smaller beds behind Massey Hall. However, the area is not new to roses, as there was a time in Cheekwood’s history when roses grew there. It is a beautiful, serene spot with benches that overlook the distant Bevins Japanese Garden.
The move was planned for the first day of December, which turned out to be a chilly morning. The NRS gathered at the Cheekwood Rose Study Garden to dig up, pot, and relocate about 60 roses. At least 20 members arrived bundled up with gloves on, pruners in their pockets, and shovels in hand, ready to dig up the roses. Participants brought their spare large pots, ranging from 7 to 20 gallons. Ron Daniels, past president of the NRS and founder of the Rose Study Garden, directed the group—from labeling and tagging the roses to bagging up cuttings from pruned bushes nearly five feet tall. The roses were pruned to about 12–18 inches before the rosarians dug around the roots and potted them in the large containers. In the end, the NRS moved and lined up 55 roses; some had to be “shovel pruned” due to disease or poor health. The newly potted roses were well watered and placed near their new home.
On December 15, with temperatures starting in the lower twenties and lots of sunshine, Ron rallied a group of 18 NRS members and some employees from Cheekwood to replant the roses in the new garden. The three new beds were laid out by rose color, type, and size. Holes were dug then amended with Holy Cow and Mills Mix. Once the roses were planted, they were mulched in order to protect them through the winter. Two of the Old Garden Roses, ‘Old Blush’ (1793) and ‘Caldwell Pink’ (1928), would have been available when the Cheek family lived at Cheekwood. By the time the garden was planted, the temps were in the upper 30s – a perfect day for working in the Garden.
See photos of the garden being moved, click individual photo for slideshow (escape to exit):
The Rose Study Garden at Cheekwood has a two-fold purpose: provide a beautiful garden of roses for Cheekwood visitors to enjoy, but primarily to function as a teaching garden for new and experienced rosarians.
This photo gallery is as of March 20, 2023. The work day started on a cold morning and the crew included several new members. One of the main goals of the work day was to prune away the dead canes that were damaged from the Christmas 2022 freeze.
On this episode of the Rose Chat Podcast, host Teresa Byington chats with Ron Daniels, a Nashville Rose Society Master Rosarian, former president of the NRS, and longtime volunteer. 
