Growing up in Nashville, Steve Sirls had always been a bit fascinated by the old Craighead house in the Richland-West End neighborhood.
The historic home was built in 1810 and was once the home of Charlotte Robertson, whose husband, James, founded Nashville. So when the home became available in 1998, Sirls and partner Allen DeCuyper bought it.
“It has always been intriguing to me,” Sirls says. “It is one of the original pieces of property in the city and it was always on my radar. And after living in six or seven houses in the neighborhood, it just became available, so we decided to extend a little love and care to it.
“There are so many factors about it that are hard to put back together, but we have spent the past 15 years trying to do some of that with a local historian and other approaches.”
Sirls’ regional approach is just one of the growing trends in local landscaping, which is experiencing a resurgence in Middle Tennessee as people are looking to work on their outdoor living spaces again after a few years’ hiatus. From rustic vegetable gardens to high-end outdoor kitchens, local homeowners are trying it all.
One place Sirls has spent countless hours is in the gardens, only natural considering his landscape design background. Sirls had first started out trying to pay homage to the 200-year history of the home. But he quickly realized he wanted to adapt it to reflect his own preferences, as well.
“That was hard to do because they would have planted mainly vegetables because basically that is what they would have used to feed the family and helpers on the property,” Sirls explains. Today, the gardens are filled with vegetables, shade perennials, and a variety of plant beds.
Digging up the past
Ben Page of Page|Duke Landscape Architects recently finished the grounds of the Southern Living Idea House at Fontanel with his partner, Gavin Duke. They brought the same mix of classic Middle Tennessee to their work there that Sirls brought to his property.
The growth in regionalism is something he has seen more and more of in recent years, especially on the number of gardens he and Duke help plan.
“We have always been interested in regionalism and food,” Page says. “In Nashville, farm-to-table and eating local is white-hot right now. Well, you can’t get any more local than out of your back door. There’s been a tremendous – almost an insistence – toward regionalism in Nashville.”
Steve Sirls and Allen DeCuyper have restored and expanded the gardens of the old Craighead plantation house in the Richland-West End neighborhood.
-- Michelle Morrow | Nashville LedgerJust open any menu in Nashville and chances are you will find the farm listed where the ingredients were sourced. And if it isn’t there, you can bet the chef is feeling the pressure to make sure it gets there.
Page says the number of people interested in landscaping is growing, and they are even getting younger and younger.
“A big phenomenon is the number of young people who are really interested in their food sources, who are keenly interested in the Michael Pollan-idea of eating locally and eating fresh,” Page says. “There is a deeply felt intellectual idea on how that is affecting us, and people are coming to us asking for these things now.”
Award-winning author Michael Pollan writes about the intersection of culture and nature where it applies to food and design. His latest book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation was released last month.
Embracing local landscaping trends is especially easy in Middle Tennessee, thanks to the area’s ties to the nursery industry, which provides stock to the rest of the country. In fact, Page says lower Middle Tennessee is the second-largest horticultural capital in the nation.
“Regionalism has always been a good thing for Middle Tennessee,” Page says. “We produce major amounts of nursery stock [for] around the United States out of Winchester, McMinnville, Tullahoma, all of those places, so we traditionally have had access to a lot of nursery stock. Now we have branched out and are producing a lot more native plant materials.”
Bringing the outdoors in
But where to sit and enjoy the landscaping? Cathryne Hall also spends many hours in her East Nashville yard, which features a .75-acre pond out front. And she enjoys much of that time on a suspended bed inside a 16-by-36-foot, screened-in porch overlooking the pond.
“I lived in Michigan as a kid, and summer porches were the norm,” she says. She and her husband, David, knew they were going to do major remodeling on the home when they bought it in June 2001, and five years ago they did a full remodel that included adding the porch, as well as nearly 1,000 square feet of living space to make it look more like it belonged in the neighborhood.
“In the wintertime, we even come out here because we built a gas fireplace out here, and we have a heater that we roll around, and last year David built a hanging bed,” she adds. “We can literally eat, relax, go to sleep, just do whatever we want to do out here.”
Hall had not been really interested in plants or landscaping before, but she embraced her newfound hobby by attending pond groups and talking with friends about their collective success and failures.
“I used to be a stained-glass artisan and kind of re-channeled that by playing in the dirt,” she says. “But I’m a crappy gardener, and I just decided early on that it is a survival-of-the-fittest world. I can’t say how many water lilies I put by my pond and just said ‘good luck.’”
Business picks up
Middle Tennessee gardeners have an advantage on many other regions since the area – particularly Winchester, McMinnville and Tullahoma – provides much of the nursery stock for the country.
-- Michelle Morrow | Nashville LedgerAdding outdoor living space is something custom home builder Bryan Edwards of Hughes-Edwards in Hendersonville says is picking up speed again after about five years of downtime. His own French country home in Gallatin boasts more than 1,000-square feet of outdoor living space with a built-in grill, sink and prep area, as well as mini-fridge, fireplace, ceiling fans and retaining walls.
“In the last two years, we have done a significant amount of outdoor living spaces,” he says.
Specifically, he explains, people are adding fireplaces and televisions to turn the outdoors into an extension of the house.
That makes sense as homeowners are staying in their homes longer and creating spaces they love to live in.
And that’s a good thing since adding an outdoor room doesn’t come cheap.
“It’s like another part of your house without heat and air, and if you want a very nice outdoor living space they can start at $30,000 and go up from there,” Edwards explains.
“With TVs and kitchens, you are looking at $60,000-$80,000. And then if you want a pizza oven or a lot of the other stuff, it becomes even more.”
Edwards says having a covered space is almost essential because of the sun, and a screened-in area can help combat mosquitoes.
“When you’re doing the framing, and the roof, and the gas lines, and a lot of stonework, it is definitely $50,000 and up. But it is always going to depend on exactly what they want done.”
So whatever you do, you’d better love it because expecting a full return on your investment in an outdoor space isn’t likely a reality, although the amenities are certain to draw more interest against similar homes on the market.
“The way that the appraisals are going now, you better do it because you want it,” Edwards explains. “It adds to the aesthetics of the house and the livability of the house because they really are an extension of the house.
“Predominantly, most people are doing it because they’re going to stay in the house for a while, and it gives them more of a lifestyle.”
Hiring a pro
And the trend for younger people to embrace landscaping is something that extends to outdoor living spaces as well. And they like to hire a professional to do it.
A recent online survey conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of PLANET, the national trade association of landscape industry professionals, shows that younger adults, ages 18 to 34, stand out as most likely to have hired professionals for the building of outdoor living spaces, patios, and walkways over the past year (9 percent vs. 3 percent of those age 35 and up).
PLANET CEO Sabeena Hickman believes one reason for that is the move away from idealistic DIY projects as more people realize how much work goes into transforming an outdoor space, much of it requiring special equipment the average homeowner wouldn’t have tucked into the shed out back.
“It is a hard trade to learn and there is a lot more that goes into it than you can pick up by watching HGTV, and I’m guilty of that,” she says.
“I think as our industry has matured, more people are realizing that it makes a lot of sense to hire a professional. They want to hire the right person who has the knowledge and the skills, and also the physical ability.
“A lot of these projects take a crew and a workforce that would take a husband and wife a lot of time.”
While Sirls hires some help occasionally to help with heavy lifting, he loves spending time in the garden and finds something new each time he is out there, like the brick molds that were used to form the clay dug from the creek bed at the edge of the property to actually build the house.
He even uses the kiln the bricks were fired in as the base of a fish pond.
“When you are a plant person, it’s horrible because all you do is talk to your fellow plant people, look for new plants, try and get the newest and best thing, and try it out if it doesn’t work for you move on to something else,” Sirls says.
“You add and take away, and if things get too large, you reduce them. Plants are kind of like the inside of the home – you can sort of redecorate if you feel like it. And, if you’re back holds out.”