Tennessee
Gardens - An Historical Vignette
Native Americans named Tennessee
after the main river within her boundary. The word "ten-assee"
is said to recall the curvature of a spoon, much like
the undulations and bends in the grand river.
Memphis can claim the
first formal gardens in Tennessee in what is now the business
area of Memphis, but was then Fort Ferdinand on the Chickasaw
Bluff. These formal Spanish gardens were cultivated in
1795, long before the colonists arrived.
A willow tree that is said to have been a sprout from
the willow on St. Helena at the grave of Napoleon, grows
in the garden of The Andrew Johnson House, Greenville,
the home of the seventeenth president of the United States.
Bibliography
and Acknowledgments
Shown: Iris ( Iridaceae )
