Home of the Practically Perfect Pink Phlox and other native plants for pollinators

Monday, July 15, 2013

Nashville In Bloom: July GBBD

Sunday morning we headed to downtown Nashville to walk. There's a great pedestrian bridge that crosses the Cumberland River and it's a good place to view the city skyline. The bridge always lives up to its promise of marvelous views and photo ops!
But, we weren't there to just see the Nashville Skyline, we were heading to someplace special.

Just below the bridge on the edge of the river is Cumberland Park.

According to Metro parks literature "Cumberland Park is an innovative play space for children and families incorporating unique play structures and water features to create an exciting new attraction along Nashville’s riverfront.  The park is designed to engage children and adults in a variety of creative play settings and contains a series of play zones that offer a range of both active and passive recreational features such as natural play equipment for children, spray-grounds and water jets, bridges, climbing walls, walking paths, picnic areas, a stage with an open lawn, and a river walk."
 
Echinaceas, spent Coreopsis, emerging Rudbeckias, grasses and sedges

That is certainly true, but, the main attraction for me are the plantings along the Explorer Trail.

Echinacea and native trees
The crushed-stone trail weaves through tree, shrub and meadow plantings that are designed to attract butterflies, bees and other wildlife.
Joe-Pye weed
I think the natives are perfect to share with you for July Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. Above is a Eupatorium dubium. I've written about the Joes here.

Clethra alnifolia 'Ruby Spice' is mass planted along one curve in the trail and not only looked spectacular, it was covered with pollinators.
Right now, the Echinaceas are the dominant plant in bloom, but, the Black Eyed Susans, Butterflybush and native grasses are beginning to strut their stuff.

move over Lurie, Nashville has a pretty garden with architectural punctuations!
There were really cool sedges and grasses that I couldn't id in this hillside planting, but, next time I'll take my books with me!

Although, there were many bumblebees all over the plants, there were no butterfly to be seen.
Little Bluestem, a delightful native to Tennessee prairies and prairie remnants,  was planted throughout the trails and walkways. I promise to bring you back here this fall when the late blooming wildflowers and grasses are in full bloom.
Thank you for coming along with me as I explored Nashville's very own little pollinator haven along the Cumberland River.  Now popover to Carol's at May Dreams Gardens to see more gardens and blooming plants from all over this great big beautiful world.


xoxogail

PS Lest you think my garden is bare~Here's a peak



Gail Eichelberger is a gardener and therapist in Middle Tennessee. She loves wildflowers and native plants and thoroughly enjoys writing about the ones she grows at Clay and Limestone. She reminds all that the words and images are the property of the author and cannot be used without written permission.

32 comments:

  1. Thanks for the beautiful Walk in the Park!
    No fair showing us a bloom that looks like peppermint candy without telling us what it is!
    Have a wonderful day!
    Lea
    Lea's Menagerie

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  2. What a fabulous park! I love seeing nature incorporated in the city!

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  3. How lucky to have such a park. I am involved with our Bridge of Flowers in Shelburne Falls, MA, but the Bridge (a former trolley bridge) is comparatively small and we can't have such mass plantings, but it is a mass of bloom from April through October. It has a website www.bridgeofflowersmass.org.

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  4. Oh, this was a beautiful Bloom Day post! What a treasure in the city, thanks so much for showing it to us. I love Echinaceas, and that shot of them blooming in a huge swath is just marvelous.

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  5. Thank you for taking us along and ending with that refreshing twist of peppermint.

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  6. thank you gail...i had no idea that was in nashville. i am going to plan to take the grands and abbey down there soon. it is lovely. your captures of the gardens with the skyline in the background are amazing...tourist brochure worthy. i love it.

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  7. Great pics! I've got to get down to Cumberland Park soon and see all the plantings you pointed out. Strange about the absence of butterflies. They seem to be mostly missing from my garden too :(...

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  8. Absolutely beautiful...what a treat! I really hope you do go back later in the season...I would love to see those grasses in their full glory!

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  9. Beautiful Gail and great photos of our city. I need to make the trek downtown to see this park. Did they really have butterfly bush planted?

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    1. I am pretty sure it was butterfly bush~same flower type and silvery leaves! They built they garden for attracting butterflies, so someone might have suggested that planting.

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  10. What a wonderful park. That mass of echinaceas is glorious. And, on a non-floral note, I really like your opening shot of the rooftops and clouds.

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    1. Thank you...I had to run to make the shot before the clouds drifted by.

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  11. what a fun place. Did you wish you had brought your snippers with you so could could dead head that coreopsis. No? Of course not that would have been me. tee hee.

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  12. Oh, I think I am in coneflower heaven! Funny, but I was thinking of the Lurie, too, as I scrolled down through the photos of all these beautiful natives. What a wonderful place for a walk! I would have been drawn to this trail, too, though the water spray area would have been my end stop on a hot day like today:)

    P.S. Thanks for showing the 'Ruby Spice' clethra--so that's what it's supposed to look like! I've been waiting for three years for mine to bloom.

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  13. I love all these new urban gardens popping up. I can't wait until we get ours. The coneflowers are very impressive. Several of us here in Norfolk have seen a noticeable decrease in the number of butterflies this year, and are not sure what might be the cause. However, dragonflies are in unusual abundance.

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  14. Thank you for sharing this wonderful place, dear Gail, and your photos of the skyline are delightful. The city should hire you to do PR! The wildflower path would be a destination for any gardener. Seeing mass plantings does the heart and soul good.
    xoxoxo
    Frances

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  15. This is so beautiful and your photos are wonderful.

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  16. Beautiful!!! The photos are stunning. Wonder how they keep the echinacea from flopping on the ground?

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  17. I love walks like this. Kind of similar to the Lurie garden here, though Lurie has exotics mixed in with the natives.

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  18. Good idea, and what a great place to highlight for GBBD! I have small patches of Echinacea here, but how wonderful to see an entire hillside of them. Too bad about the butterflies, though. I've been seeing more here, lately--even monarchs in my garden. Not very many, though. :(

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  19. Wonderful pictures, fantastic photographic reportage, wonderful flowers :) Regards

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  20. It's wonderful that cities are becoming more ecologically aware in their parks, and also making fun natural play areas for children. It's great to see all the natives. I was sniffing Echinacea at the nursery and was surprised to find many had a delightful fragrance, which gives them more appeal to me. Great city photos!

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  21. Wishing you a very happy birthday, Gail! I hope you've had a day filled with your favorite things, especially glorious blooms!
    Thanks for taking us to this lovely park. Your photos are wonderful and make me feel as though I'm there with you.
    My Echinaceas are just beginning to bloom here in upstate NY. We're having a heatwave this week. It's too hot to garden...and that's just too darn hot!

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  22. Heaps of great things to look at there.

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  23. I need to visit Nashville. Never been. Since my husband's a musician, I think I could talk him into it! Of course, he's been.

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  24. When I visited Nashville it was for a conference and I didn't get a chance to see any gardens...I will make note for future visits...just beautiful!

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  25. You are so privilege to have something like that near you. The landscapes are beautiful as well as the blooms, but your own petunia at the end is spectacular.

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  26. How pretty! Thanks for sharing your field trip with us. It's interesting to see this glimpse of your hometown, Gail.

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  27. I live in Murfreesboro, next time I'm in Nashville my family will have to check out that park.

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  28. How absolutely lovely! Makes me want to hop on a plane right now.

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  29. Tried to read more about the Cup plant on your blog today, but it said "not available" Humm. So I went back to this earlier posting for your Blog. I have a number of cup plants that have wandered over from my neighbors native landscaping - very nice. Good structure in my gardens too. Jack

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  30. Wow, that's a real beauty, I'm glad you showed it to us. I am so drawn to prairie style plantings, and it seems that public parks are "catching on" to a more native style. Love it!

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"Insects are the little things that run the world." Dr. E O Wilson