Nov 1 Virtual Meeting – Sarah Edmonds, “The Hermitage Garden; Exploring the First 200 Years”

Sarah Edmonds, Historic Garden Manager for the Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage, is our guest speaker for the November meeting of the Nashville Rose Society. The virtual meeting will be held at on November 1, 2020, at 2:00pm using the GoToMeeting app.

Since the construction of the first Hermitage mansion in 1819, the site of Rachel Jackson’s garden has seen several revisions and redesigns, most associated with work on the house itself. The gardens fortune’s also rose and fell based on enslaved peoples labor, budgets, staffing, site priorities, natural disasters, visitor-ship, and shifts due to the public interest in Andrew Jackson, tourism, world wars, and right up to today’ global public health concerns.

As the design of the Hermitage changed architecturally, the design of both the yard and garden near the house evolved from a protected area surrounding the house into more specialized, subdivided areas. The early garden was undoubtedly created in part because of Rachel’s fondness of flowers, including what we now call Old Garden Roses (defined by the ARS as types of roses that existed prior to 1867). One visitor will remark that he had never met anyone more enthusiastically fond of flowers than Rachel Jackson. Rachael would often give nosegays of flowers to guest as a token of her hospitality.

Here we are 200 years later, let’s explore how the garden has grown!

Virtual Visit Garden

Since everyone is staying indoors, we want to show off some of the outdoors in today's Virtual Visit through the Garden! Enjoy this walk through video showing off the beautiful flowers and incredible work from our garden staff!

Posted by Andrew Jackson's Hermitage on Thursday, April 9, 2020

For more information on the Hermitage, visit thehermitage.com, like their FB Page, and follow on Instagram.

More information on how to log into GoToMeeting, please see Marty Reich’s email to NRS members. If you would like to attend as a guest, please submit your request on the Ask a Consulting Rosarian form on the website.