The Hermitage, Home of Old Hickory

by Stanley F. Horn

In early spring there is first the brilliant bloom of the English hawthorn, then the narcissi and tulips and hyacinths making the air heavy with their fragrance, also the jonquils and old-fashioned blue-bottles and purple shades. Crocuses and butter-and-eggs and, later, iris and peonies all combine to make the garden a springtime riot of bloom. So spectacularly do the peonies bloom that they always attract large crowds of visitors while they are in full flower, more than a thousand visitors having gone to the Hermitage garden in one day to witness the rare floral spectacle.

Interspersed with all the conventional plants and shrubs are some of the native wild flowers that bloom in the fields and along the river banks near by; for when the Hermitage garden was first planted the florist’s art had not reached its present peak of perfection, and although the thoughtful General sent home flower seeds from Philadelphia and Washington, Rachel took pleasure in augmenting the garden’s finery by selections from the surrounding country. Visitors may still see in the beds there the nodding Jacob’s ladder, the columbine and other such homely blossoms. The wild yucca, with its semi-tropical appearance, was brought in from some of the near-by cedar glades, along with prickly pear cacti and rock roses; and a graceful fringe tree was planted near the entrance gate.

In the beds in the center of the garden there have always grown tulips in the springtime and then some kind of annuals to sustain the succession of blooms through the summer. Early in June the great collection of ascension lilies begin to bloom, filling the garden with their perfume; and throughout the summer there are the roses, both in bush and climbing form, mostly of the old-fashioned varieties—moss roses, the yellow briar, maiden’s blush, Louis Phillippe, macrophylla, pink musk, etc.

The shrubbery also contributes its share of blossoms, from the golden bells, bridal wreath, snowballs and calacanthus of the spring through the altheas or Rose of Sharon of the summer, to the pink and red crape myrtles of the late summer which cap off their showy mass of blooms with a brilliantly colored array of scarlet leaves in the fall months.

The Hermitage garden offers some form of attraction at any season of the year.

During the early days of the Ladies’ Hermitage Association the wealth of bloom in the garden was turned to good account, especially in the spring. Then cuttings of jonquils and peonies, literally by the wagonload, were sent into Nashville and sold on the street; and there were also sales of seeds and cuttings and surplus bulbs, so that visitors might take away with them living mementoes of the Hermitage garden. From this source the association was able to derive a considerable and much-needed revenue at a time when funds were scarce and every dollar of income was welcome.

During his lifetime Uncle Alfred, who acted as a guide to visitors, always took especial interest in the garden and beamed with proprietary pride when visitors gave expression to their appreciation of its beauties. “Please do not pluck the flowers” says a conspicuous sign by the side of the gate; but if a visitor really seemed interested in the garden’s attractions the old retainer would slyly say: “Now if you like dat rosebud, I won’t see you if you gets it.”

Some idea of what the Hermitage garden looked like in the old days may be gathered from a description of it which was given in an interview printed in one of the Nashville papers several years ago with an old lady who had visited there with her father when she was a girl. Looking back down the vista of the years, she said:

The flower beds about the middle of the garden were there when the General lived there. He had an old negro, Alfred, to attend to the garden. They had a regular vegetable garden combined with the flower garden. The vegetable garden was not with the flower part of the garden, but you could see the vegetable garden when you stood in the flower garden or where the flowers were. They had cabbages, potatoes, beets, beans and squash and other vegetables in the vegetable part of the garden. They had sage and thyme around on the edge of the flower beds. They had in the flower beds hollyhocks, beds of pinks of all colors, rose bushes, tea roses, macrophylla and cinnamon roses, moss roses, white lilacs, tiger lilies, heliotrope (white and purple). Some of the beds were edged with sweet violets. There were poppies in some of the beds, and hyacinths and tulips. The Washington bower was on the side—on the fence and climbing up the trees in the garden—they were trees with long white flowers, locust trees I think. The garden was larger then than it is now—it was larger east and west than now and was fenced with a plank fence. There was a weeping willow there but I can’t locate it now. There was a large rope swing near the house and near to the entrance to the garden. It was tied to the limb of a hickory tree.

Continuing with her description of the garden this old lady spoke of two magnolia trees “about the middle of the garden near the tomb—good big trees” and in speaking further of the weeping willows stated that they were “just over the fence, near and opposite the tomb.” She also named more of the flowers that grew in the old garden: Several big bushes of crape myrtle; verbenas, all colors; sunflowers; all-colored flags—red, white and purple; snowballs; red, pink and white peonies; old-fashioned honeysuckle—coral, white and yellow, lilacs, white and purple. The “Washington bower” she describes as having a purple flower, so it was probably the large-flowering variety of clematis which was also known as the virgin bower. She also mentioned, in enumerating the shrubbery, “japonica bushes” which, she said, “has red blossoms and comes early and late;” and this, we may presume, was the flowering shrub known now as the English hawthorn and also called the fire-bush.