Around the river bend

Always one to jump at the opportunity to visit a garden, I was particularly pleased to learn that the director at Crescent Bend, a historic home located along the Tennessee River in Knoxville, postponed digging up the spring tulips until after the writers’ group I was traveling with had the chance to see them. 

We arrived on an overcast Saturday afternoon and flocked out to the three-acre formal, Italian-terraced gardens where fountains sprayed and roses, herbs, and evergreen hedges grew. The lowest tier of the gardens, which was nearest the river, had been transformed into a landscape of pink and white and green. The tulips were chosen in support of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which promotes breast cancer research and awareness. Dutch bulbs had sprouted giant, pale pink cups and smaller fuchsia cups with white, fringed edges. Though it was a bit late in the season the tulips were still a sight to behold. 

Upon returning to the house we were invited to take our seats at a casually elegant table set for lunch with hearty salads, homemade dressings and goblets full of sweet tea. Drury Paine Armstrong built the home in 1834. Crescent Bend was once a 900-acre working farm and so named for its prominent setting overlooking a bend in the river. 

Enamored with the home’s vibrant history, the spry, charming and petite docent and event planner Judy McMillan told stories of its previous owners and labored upkeep with enthusiasm—she and volunteers had just finished hand-polishing the home’s silver collection. The collection of American and English pieces features the work of eminent silversmiths like Paul de Lamerie, Paul Storr, and seven women silversmiths including Elizabeth Godfrey and Hester Bateman. The home also features an exquisite collection of 18th Century American and English furniture and decorative arts.

The date was nearing for McMillan’s daughter’s wedding, which McMillan was planning as it was to be held at Crescent Bend and her daughter and soon to be son-in-law lived several hours away. 

“My daughter is a reporter too,” she said to me as we stood in the hallway of the historic home. “She lives in Whitesburg, Ky. She’s marrying a fellow from the local radio station.”

I furrowed my brow a bit. “WMMT?” I asked.

“Why yes!” McMillan exclaimed.

“Smoky Mountain Living is an underwriter for WMMT,” I said with a smile.

“Do you know Dave?” she asked.

“David Fields?” 

“Yes!”

“That’s who my contact is at the station,” I replied. 

“That’s who my daughter is marrying!” McMillan gushed. “Oh my gosh. You simply have to come to the wedding.”

And so I found myself standing in the foyer with a wedding invitation featuring the bride and groom as caricatures of birds when the subject of tulips came up again. 

“What exactly do you do with the tulips when you dig them up,” I asked, my inner gardener twitching at the thought of good bulbs going to waste. 

“Well, volunteers come in to help dig them up, and if you help dig, you get to take what you dig home with you,” she said. 

My eyes lit up. “And when is it that you will be doing this digging of which you speak?” I asked with a grin. 

“Tomorrow at 2 p.m. Why? Do you want to come dig?”

Sunday afternoon I was wrist deep in the garden’s beautifully enriched soil alongside two retirees belonging to the local Sons of the Confederacy regiment. The Sons of the Confederacy group is “preserving the history and legacy of these heroes, so future generations can understand the motives that animated the Southern Cause.” It is the oldest hereditary organization for male descendents of Confederate soldiers. With my Yankee last name, I was hardly the compatriot these fellows were looking for; however, our garden forks and muddy shoes united us. I spent an hour pulling tulip bulbs from the earth and tossing them into large plastic tubs to then be sorted. 

“Did you know that tulip bulbs used to be so valuable that you could have bought a house with them?” I interjected. 

“Really?”

“Yeah. They were a hot commodity in Europe,” I said. 

“Heck, I’d be a millionaire,” said one of the Sons as he stood surrounded by hundreds of uprooted bulbs and hundreds more waiting to be dug. 

Before heading out I claimed three bags of bulbs to take home. I knew there would be more than I could ever possibly use, and I ended up sharing more than 100 of them with friends. 

I returned a few weeks later for McMillan’s daughter’s wedding with a gift of a small bird candleholder I’d happened across at Abode on Market Square the same day I received the invitation and a vinyl copy of M. Ward’s “Post-War” that the couple had requested. The wedding was beautiful and unique, very much in line with Knoxville’s alt-country vibe given the officiant in a burgundy suit and cowboy boots and the bride’s knee-length ivory dress, blue high-heels and a lace veil. 

The ceremony was held in the gardens where hundreds of begonias lined the beds in which the tulips once stood. It seemed appropriately fertile ground from which a marriage could begin to grow.

— By Sarah Kucharski