Knoxville Botanical Garden & Arboretum

Located on an East Tennessee ridge overlooking the Smokies and five minutes from downtown Knoxville, this 44-acre garden was once a nursery run by descendants of David W. Howell, who was originally granted the land for service during the American Revolutionary War. Citizens formed a not-for-profit in 2001 with the mission to preserve and establish a botanical garden. The site has some 2,000 plants, with mature trees and shrubs, along with whimsical round stone buildings, stone-sided greenhouses and secret garden paths and alleys.

Now open -The Martha H. Ashe Garden. The stone walls surrounding the garden were some of the first built by the Howell landscape crew, dating to the early 1930's. A few of the unique plants featured in the Garden are a pair of large Japanese Tree Lilacs (syringa reticulata), a Snowball Viburnum (Viburnum macophylla) that has been trained as an espalier, Allegany Serviceberry (Amelanchier laevis), a large China Fir (Cunninghmia lanceolata) and several Blue Atlas Cedars (Cedrus atalantica). The entire garden is watched over by a majestic Southern Red Oak (Quercus falcate) that measures 15 feet around.

Open daily, sunrise to sunset.