December 7 – Workday at Cheekwood Rose Study Garden from 9:00-12:00

As Marty likes to say, it is time to put the kids to bed, in other words, winterize the roses.

Please plan to attend the workday at the Cheekwood Rose Study Garden on Monday, December 7, 2020, from 9:00am – 12:00, to help get the roses ready for winter. We will be doing general cleanup, check pH and add lime if needed, then mound up mulch around bushes. If you are new to roses, this is the perfect time to learn what you need to do to make sure your roses survive the winter. You do not need to be a member of the Nashville Rose Society.

We will need to enter Cheekwood through the back gate off of Cheek Road. Cheekwood requires face covering and names must be on the list to enter. If you plan to come, send your name and contact information to Robert Bowen so that your name will be on the the gate entry list.

Dress warmly – highs in the 40’s but partly sunny – and bring your pruners and gloves.


December 6 – A Virtual Christmas Party, “Christmas Roses: Legends and Traditions” by Mary Hext

The last meeting of 2020 will be held on December 6 at 2:00pm. The meeting will be virtual using GoToMeeting.

It would be fun if everyone would “Dress Up for the Holidays” and come to the meeting in a holiday outfit. It could be an ugly Christmas sweater, a Santa Claus look-a-like outfit, rain deer antlers, or an elf costume – whatever you have that has a holiday/Christmas theme.

For our program, Mary Hext will present “Christmas Roses: Legends and Traditions”. She will show various roses that have ties to Christmas and tell the Christmas tradition that each rose was named for.

Afterwards, awards will be presented to two outstanding members.

Nancy Jones will close the meeting with a Christmas message.

For 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.


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.


October 4 – Joan Clayton-Davis, “Fall Gardening with Flowers and Vegetables” + Rose Show Results

Joan Clayton-Davis, Coordinator of the Master Gardeners of Davidson County Speakers Bureau

The October meeting of the Nashville Rose Society will be a video meeting using GoToMeeting. Our speaker, Joan Clayton-Davis, will present timely information on “Fall Gardening with Flowers and Vegetables”.

Joan Clayton-Davis is Coordinator of the Master Gardeners of Davidson County Speakers Bureau, which educates the community on gardening, horticulture, etc. at libraries, schools, community organizations and churches, reaching more than 500 people each year. Joan has been a Master Gardener since 2014 and received the University of Tennessee Extension 2017 “Outstanding Master Gardener Award” Central Region. She is a retired Health Communications/Social Marketing Consultant.

Read more about Joan’s family history of farming and gardening since 1913 in her interview with the Nashville Public Library on blog post “A Master Gardeners Story”.

After Joan’s presentation, the winners of the 2020 Nashville Rose Society Virtual Rose Show will be announced! Stay tuned to find out who the Queens, Kings, Princesses, and Best of Classes are.

Nashville Rose Society members will receive an email with information to connect to the meeting using GoToMeeting, the same app that we have used the last couple of month. Any non-members wishing to attend the meeting should send a message using the Ask a Consulting Rosarian form on the website.