While Middle Tennessee weather can be unpredictable in the final months of the calendar year, scores of people within Gaylord Opryland Hotel work round the clock so guests can experience at least two seasons simultaneously.

As anyone who has strolled through the sprawling hotel’s Cascades or Delta Atriums during the holidays can attest, the scenes of decorated and diverse plants and trees throughout the sprawling hotel are nothing short of astonishing.

Add curated events like carriage rides, ice tubing and a skating rink during the holidays, and you have an annual destination for wintertime enthusiasts of all ages.

With 5 million holiday lights, 15 miles of garland, a 48-foot-tall Christmas tree and more than 15,000 poinsettias on display, not to mention more than 100,000 live plants that reside in the atria year around, the hotel’s enormous sectional lobby is practically its own nature preserve.

Head horticulturist Drew Kerr, hired to oversee and care for the resort’s selection of flora throughout the year, designs and redesigns new and continuing installations while managing the hotel’s 9 acres of atriums including the 4.5-acre Louisiana-themed Delta Atrium, the Cascades Atrium (waterfalls) the Southern-themed Magnolia lobby and The Garden Conservatory, a 1.5-acre tropical plant garden. All are fed sunlight through hundreds of acres of glass that act as a gigantic full-spectrum sunroof.

Kerr says the upward trajectory of adding atriums and plant installations happened over time.

“It’s been an iconic place for quite a while,” Kerr says. “But the hotel was built in the late ’70s. The Conservatory Garden was added 1984 with the idea that it would be a people-centric design. We added the Cascades Atrium in 1988, but Delta is our youngest and biggest and that was only built in 1996.”

The hotel’s sectional lobby feels both lush and exotic, Kerr says, because the plants and trees are not within Tennessee’s hardiness zone.

Opryland Hotel’s Cascades Atrium, which was added in 1988 along with 800 guest rooms. The atrium covers 2 acres and has two 3.5-story waterfalls.

-- Photographs Provided

“Our plants are in hardiness zones for South Georgia to South Florida,” Kerr says, which would explain the sabal palms, banana trees and camellias in the Delta Atrium, and the two 40-foot-tall Southern magnolia trees in front of the Delta Mansion. The resort’s climate is also controlled at a constant temperature between 68 and 72 degrees, and the relative humidity is kept at about 55%: sunny and warm.

‘I’ll be back again someday’

Year after year, the resort’s events and entertainment team tries to outdo the prior year’s “A Country Christmas.” Given that the hotel flies in 40 ice artisans from Harbin in the Heilongjiang province of China – home to the The Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival – that seems like a pretty high bar.

Opryland Hotel made its debut in 1977 with 600 rooms.

This year’s theme ICE!, the signature attraction of “A Country Christmas,” is the return of Frosty the Snowman, a favorite theme from years past. The ICE! Installation is housed separately from the hotel in a 20,000-square-foot facility where the Harbin sculptors work for six weeks to get ready for opening day Nov. 8.

“We are very much in the thick of it right now,” says Amanda Taylor, director of special events and entertainment at Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center. “Right now, most of the day is spent really working through the planning and the production, focusing on all the details of the décor, putting in special installations and staffing but also really focusing on that client experience.”

Taylor’s team works with other departments on a master plan as early as February. The ramping up of Gaylord Opryland Hotel as a Christmas destination started four decades ago.

This year’s ICE! enthusiasts will be treated to a “Frosty the Snowman”-themed experience, carved by 40 artisans flown in from China.

“We have our horticultural team, our electrical team, and they work on individual components with me to create ‘A Country Christmas,’” Taylor says. “In the early ’80s, some great minds said, ‘How do we fill a hotel in November and December?’ and they began with Christmas décor, and then they added a craft fair; that’s how it all began.”

The resort historically has offered both paid events like skating, carriage rides, ice tubing and the Delta Riverboat Christmas Cruise along with free events.

“I think about our free fountain show in the Delta Atrium and how we can make that a little more spectacular each year,” Taylor adds. “We run our atrium shows throughout the year, but the type of show changes with the seasons.”

The hotel also offers a map of places most favored by guests for photo opportunities.

The star of the show will be on hand this holiday season, along with many of the other features Opryland Hotel visitors have come to enjoy over the years.

“We have this 48-foot tree that has been part of our history for over 30 years,” Taylor says. “We tried to change that, and then we heard from our dedicated loyal guests who said, ‘Wait a second, that is my yearly Christmas card!’”

Hiding in plain sight

Seemingly a landscape horticulturalist’s fever dream and/or dream job, Kerr says it’s mostly the latter.

“I love my work. I come from a background where I’ve always gravitated toward premier properties. This job came up and I applied,” says Kerr, who was previously the grounds manager for Kalahari Resorts & Conventions and the golf course superintendent

for Omni Hotels before coming to Nashville.

“I think they were looking for somebody with a lot of experience in landscape operations, who could come in and refine the operations a little bit and also, at the same time, be able to implement better design, a better overall flow to our atriums.”

The daily upkeep, he says, requires a team of 12 plant specialists who water and preen but who also make sure the tools for plant care are tucked away before guests arrive in the morning, certainly before those who’ve taken the hotel up on its offer of a free self-guided tour through Gaylord Opryland Hotel’s flora while it’s decked out for the holidays.

“We make sure that we are watering plants properly and fertilizing properly,” he says. “We do what we call ‘yellow leafing’ every morning; we go through and make sure that everything looks neat and tidy because we like the hoses to be up and out-of-the-way by 9 a.m. because we have guests checking out at 11 a.m.

“A lot of what we do is always centered around having the least impact,” Kerr continues. “We always aim to have the sections show-ready. We’re looking to bring beauty by having different textures and colors in different geometric shapes all kind of dive into one another.”

While the ICE! events are located inside, the outdoor venue is like an annual winter fair with ice skating, ice tubing and pop-up shops.

“A few years back, we added the ice tubing and the ice rink; we fully developed that area out there near the ice exhibit that we call Pinetop Village,” says Taylor. “It’s almost like your town fair. But we are planted and rooted in Nashville, so of course we have a live entertainment stage at Pinetop.”

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to see a bit of the festivities is to swing by the Magnolia lawn at 5:20 p.m. any evening when the outdoor lights are flipped on; there is a tree-lighting ceremony made more Christmassy by Dickensian carolers and a Nativity scene Nov. 8-Jan. 4.