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ARS Fall 2018 Conf.
Chattanooga, TN

October 19-21, 2018, Early
Registration before Sept. 7th

Welcome to the ARS Fall Meeting in Chattanooga!

The Tennessee Valley Chapter invites you to participate in the fall ARS conference on October 19-21 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The Chattanooga area is a remarkably vibrant place to live or visit with an endless range of activities and resources. The city has twice won the Outdoor Magazine "Best City Ever" award for the quality of diverse outdoor activities in the region. With its beautiful mountains, scenic vistas and river, Chattanooga has been attracting tourists since its founding. In fact, the entire Union Army came in the 1800's and stayed for months!

Convention Hotel is The Holiday Inn Chattanooga-Hamilton PlaceHotel

The Holiday Inn Chattanooga-Hamilton Place will host our meeting. This is a recently constructed multi-story hotel with good conference facilities located adjacent to Interstate 75 at exit 5. This location in addition to being convenient for those driving is also within five miles of the Chattanooga Airport. The Holiday Inn has made a special conference rate of $99 (including a hot breakfast for registered guests) available to us. You can register online using group code ARS with the following direct link

The Holiday Inn Chattanooga-Hamilton Place

Or you can call the hotel at 423-485-1185 and give the ARS group code to the hotel agent.

The hotel has agreed to honor this rate for a few days either side of our conference if you would like to stay a little while and partake of the many activities available in the fall in Chattanooga. With the world's largest freshwater aquarium, miles of biking and walking trails, a redeveloped pedestrian and bike-friendly waterfront, a large outdoor sculpture park, countless restaurants and shops, the Tennessee River Gorge, nearby whitewater rafting on a former Olympic course, the Incline Railway and numerous parks and monuments commemorating the Union and Confederate Armies' earlier visits, there is just a lot to do if you have a little spare time.

Friday Banquet and Presentations!

StewartiaThe ARS Board meeting will start Friday morning and conclude prior to our Friday evening reception and banquet to which everyone is invited. We have three outstanding speakers who will be discussing exceptional native garden plants with a center of diversity in our Southern Appalachian region. These will include Jack Johnson, who will speak to us about stewartias. Sometimes referred to as the "mountain camellia", these small deciduous trees are not camellias. Jack has hiked all over the Southern Appalachian Mountains studying the unique, rare and beautiful trees and likely knows more about them than anyone else. He has also consulted and assisted arboreta and botanical gardens with stewartias and provided them with important germplasm of these plants. Jack will tell us a little about the related Asian species of stewartia, but he will focus on the varieties found in the South, their bloom color variations, as well as how to cultivate and propagate these treasures. Thanks to Jack, we will have some native stewartias available in the plant sale.

TrilliumTrilliums are a woodland jewel that flourish with rhododendron culture and make excellent companion plants. Tom Patrick is a botanist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and has spent much of his time studying these endemic treasures that have a center of diversity in the Southeastern states and particularly the Southern Appalachians. Over the past decade, many new species of trilliums have been discovered, many of which have not been fully described and named. Tom has been at the center of many of these discoveries, and we understand one of these new trilliums will be named for our speaker. While very rare, these new trilliums are beginning to enter commerce and a few are already available by mail order through Plant Delights Nursery.


Azalea BaldsMany of you are familiar with the legendary Azalea Balds in the Appalachian Mountains. There are also a lot of other locations in the Southern Appalachians and foothills that are contributing to our growing but very incomplete knowledge about our native azaleas. Charlie Andrews, President of the ARS Azalea Chapter in Georgia, has visited and studied a lot of these lesser-known sites. Charlie will be talking with us about what may be described as natural hybrids of our extensive range of native azaleas. Charlie thinks these are plants in a rapid state of evolution and he will challenge our conventional thinking with his observations and conclusions.

BrandiFriday evening's activities will conclude with a little time to shop the plant sale. In addition to the previously mentioned stewartias, we plan to have some of the Southern Living Southgate Rhododendrons available in various sizes for purchase. These have proved highly successful for gardeners in our area on a range of soils including cherty clay. Our experience is once they are established, you can kill them, but you have to work at it. We also plan to have some native azaleas available for purchase. We also plan to have a modest selection of garden-worthy native plants that are special to our region.

Saturday is Tour Day!

DruckerWe board the bus at 8 AM (Eastern) for a short ride to the historic Saint Elmo neighborhood at the foot of Lookout Mountain. Here we will make a brief stop at the garden of Scott and Olga Drucker for Coffee and doughnuts (save room when you have breakfast at the hotel). Scott and Olga are professional garden designers with a growing list of clients. They have established a beautiful cottage garden with a discernable English feel on a typical residential lot in a historic neighborhood. This garden continues to evolve and while small, it offers us many design tips on how to effectively use space and borrow or block views from adjoining properties and enhance the garden.

RockCityAfter our brief visit with Scott and Olga, we travel up Lookout Mountain to visit Rock City Gardens. This commercial garden is a classic historic tourist attraction that is very well known for its many years of signs painted on thousands of barns across the eastern United States. Rock City Gardens was started about 85 years ago by a German immigrant and her husband who was a real estate developer. It is a fascinating site to visit. Situated along the eastern bluff of Lookout Mountain, the garden consists of an easily walkable paved trail (and a handicapped accessible alternate path) that leads you through deep natural crevasses in the rocks from which soar mature trees, rhododendrons, mountain laurels and companion plants as they reach for the sky. These narrow chasms open onto broader garden views and then lead to grand vistas overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance. We are not sure if you can really see seven states from Rock City as they claim, but we know you can see a beautiful garden that puts a really unique twist on the concept of a rock garden. The garden is well labeled and relies heavily on the use of "ironclad rhododendrons" derived from early crosses with rhododendron catawbiense throughout the plantings. The rhododendrons, kalmias, and azaleas should not be in bloom when we visit, but with some seasonal fall color, you should really enjoy your time in Rock City. At the end of this visit, you have the opportunity to purchase an iconic Rock City birdhouse in the gift shop to commemorate your visit to this American landmark.

Reflection RidingAfter visiting Rock City, our bus descends the west side of Lookout Mountain to take us to Reflection Riding Arboretum and Nature Center. Reflection Riding was initially established along the foot of Lookout Mountain as a private arboretum designed in the European style to be toured and viewed from riding on horseback. Today the large Arboretum is operated as a non-profit. There are still horses in the meadow, but the extensive arboretum horse trail has been replaced many years ago with a leisurely driving lane for our modern version of the horse. Unfortunately, this lane will not accommodate our bus, but there is much to see from the entrance facility where we will enjoy a box lunch. Reflection Riding will also open their extensive on-site native plant nursery for you to shop among their wide range of difficult-to-source nursery-propagated perennials and woody plants.

Signal MountainFrom Reflection Riding, we take a bus ride up nearby Signal Mountain to visit the sprawling rhododendron garden developed by chapter member Jimmy Wooten. Jimmy and his late wife Ilona collected and planted many rhododendrons in their woodland garden over decades along with many other companion plants such as ferns, viburnums, hostas, ephemeral wildflowers and many more. There is a certain patina in this woodland garden that only develops over time as plants mature and seedlings of companion plants colonize suitable nearby areas and display themselves in new arrangements. This effect can only be achieved with time and a little luck. Now, most of these rhododendrons are mature and provide a marvelous living library of diverse rhododendron selections that have stood the test of time in our area.

After visiting the Wooten garden, we will make a brief drive-by visit to view a nearby typical habitat of our native lowland form of rhododendron catawbiense f. insularis, which occurs along many mountain stream corridors on Signal Mountain.

Dolan GardensOur last visit will be to Dolan Gardens, the home of chapter member Frances Jones. This amazing five-acre garden rambles along the bluff of Signal Mountain with beautiful views of downtown Chattanooga, surrounding mountains and the entrance to the Tennessee River Gorge, where the massive Tennessee River has carved a canyon through the Cumberland Plateau. These views are just the setting for a large rambling garden chock full of rare, unusual and beautiful plants that are well displayed and labeled. This is a special private garden that has been developed over time by a keen and knowledgeable plantswoman. There will be adequate time to walk the garden paths, enjoy the exceptional views of the city, visit with Frances and appreciate the extensive plant collections and skill with which they are blended into a beautiful garden.

In the South, where two or more are gathered, at some point, there should be barbecue. Frances has a large covered patio seating area in her garden and this is where we will end our Saturday field trip with a catered barbecue dinner prepared for us by a local restaurant. (There will be some options available for different diets). This casual garden dinner will give us an opportunity to visit together and discuss the sights we have enjoyed as the fall twilight brings out the lights of the city below us.

After the bus ride back to our hotel, the plant sale will briefly reopen for any last minute purchases. No additional events are planned at the hotel.

Sunday Drop-By Open Houses!

For those of you who can stay with us for the day or part of the day, we will host individual drop-by open houses at some of our other local members' gardens. You will be provided maps and brief descriptions of what to expect at each garden when you pick up your registration packets. You will be warmly welcomed to visit and explore these diverse gardens. Private gardens are individual expressions of a special form of art and they are all different and each offers different things to learn.

Please come and enjoy our gardens and community.

Registration - Click here to download PDF of Registration Form

Registration Form

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