Cheekwood | Nashville, Tennessee

The Society’s first Nashville annual meeting, in 1988, convinced this Tarheel that Tennessee offers far more than fun at Gatlinburg gift shops, Grand Ole Opry entertainment, or Memphis barbeque. Thanks to 1988 meeting hosts and still-active members, Ben and Libby Page, it opened eyes onto the depths of the Volunteer State’s garden history. Cheekwood is one example highly deserving of a Gardens page post. Others will follow.

Just as Bellingrath reflects Coca-Cola earnings and Bayou Bend was built on oil income, Cheekwood owes a great debt to commercial grocer Joel Cheek’s development of the ever-popular Maxwell House Coffee. In turn, Leslie Cheek, Joel’s cousin and an investor in the company, would use his profits to buy the land and build the Cheekwood estate.

While named for and funded by Leslie and his wife Mabel Wood Cheek (thus Cheek-Wood), this archetypical Country Place Era estate set in Belle Meade reflects the well-honed talents of Cornell graduate and New York State-based landscape architect Bryant Fleming. A co-founder and one-time head of Cornell’s landscape architecture program, Fleming entered a partnership practice in Buffalo in 1904, moving to sole practice in Wyoming, New York, in 1915, and then to Ithaca in 1924. Mentored by Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., Fleming was a Cornell colleague of the famed horticulturist Liberty Hyde Bailey and also a veteran of the Warren Manning firm. Thus well-grounded, Fleming undertook a series of commissions that by the post-World War I years had placed him in the top tier of landscape architects in the nation. 

The Cheeks clearly found his work impressive, thereby charging Fleming in 1929 to design not only the grounds but also a grand house, interior and exterior. Tennessee historian Carroll Van West suggests that the Cheeks may indeed have chosen Fleming based on a professional recognition that stood out from his southern counterparts and thus offered the project elevated status. As well, Fleming was willing to heed his clients’ wishes, a joint visit to England helping to develop the bond that led to the realization of Cheekwood. The end result remains a standout of Tennessee twentieth-century homes and designed landscapes.

Set into a ridgeline and entered via a curving drive, the Cheeks’ Georgian Revival dwelling both overlooks, and melds into, the designed landscape and rolling countryside, being skillfully configured to offer multiple vistas. Built of limestone, it not only displays a material common to the area but also echoes hardscape elements used by Fleming across the property. As well, Cheekwood shares a design concept seen at the contemporaneous Bayou Bend and other large gardens of the era by featuring distinct spaces with individual themes or foci. 

The Swan Fountain, set in a round pool and large lawn, is one of the best-known component elements, sited at the property’s highest point and entered from the home’s northwest, Long Gallery, side. Moving clockwise to the east and south, Fleming placed a boxwood garden on a series of terraces with water features that include a grotto and falls. A rectangular reflecting pool anchors the design, being positioned downhill from the home’s famous wisteria arbor which extends from the house on the south side and exhibits some of the Kerrigan ironwork for which Cheekwood is also well known. Revealing European formal garden influences, statues of the muses Thalia (comedy) and Urania (astronomy and poetry) stand at either end backed by arches of deep green box. Of special interest to this writer is the overall feel of balance within the house-grounds layout, with what might be termed a Mannerist absence of symmetry in various details. The house, for example, bespeaks Andrea Palladio in total, yet a standard five-part “H” symmetrical plan yields to a projecting wing with Palladian window on the south side, while on the north the wing recedes and extends to the west. 

A pivotal moment came in 1946 when the widowed Mabel Cheek died, leaving Cheekwood to her daughter Huldah and son-in-law Walter Sharp. Walter was to play a crucial role in founding the Nashville Symphony immediately after WWII, the orchestra and Cheekwood developing a long-lasting connection. Reflecting this history, musical events remain key components of Cheekwood programming. 

In 1959, a second turning point happened when the Sharps gifted fifty-five acres for the creation of the Tennessee Botanical Gardens and Fine Arts Center. While Fleming’s legacy remains clearly evident, Cheekwood now encompasses a larger number of distinct spaces (e.g. Japanese garden, water garden, terrace garden, perennial garden, literary garden, etc.). Thus, additional hardscape, botanical, arboreal, and horticultural elements greatly enliven the estate’s grand sweep. The property gets an additional boost, moreover, by its proximity to Percy Warner Park, greatly extending Cheekwood’s viewscape.

While the main study areas of the second Nashville meeting held in 2015 lay outside the city proper, the Society has stayed connected to Cheekwood in the person of Ben Page. His landscape architectural talents have been evidenced not only in the design of the Sigourney Cheek Literary Garden, but also through the 1990s extensive restoration done to Fleming’s original installations.

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For more on Cheekwood plus a site map, see: https://cheekwood.org/visit/

See also for a detailed account: https://digital.mtsu.edu/digital/collection/p15838coll4/id/2630

On Bryant Fleming, see: https://www.tclf.org/pioneer/bryant-fleming