Still Spring Garden's Eastern Red Cedars

Have you noticed all the green plants in our Still Spring Memorial Garden this winter? Yes, many of our plants thrive during these cooler months.

Of those evergreen plants, the Eastern Red Cedar (Juniperus virginiana) is one of my favorites. It is the Tennessee State Evergreen Tree and has an interesting history. Even though it was only in 2012 that it was given the State Evergreen Tree designation, it has been important to our state for many years. It is a sacred tree to the Native American Cherokee Peoples and was one of the earliest landscape trees used by early pioneers.

Cedar Knob was the name of the hill where the Tennessee State Capitol was built, and the street at the foot of the capitol was called Cedar Street (now Charlotte Avenue). These trees were central to one of the earliest forest industries in Tennessee, the cedar pencil industry.

Here in Nashville we had cedar glades with huge swaths of these hardy trees. They can grow in many different types of soil and can be found throughout our state.

Thank you, Sandy, for your reflection on this beautiful tree.