Cheekwood Estate & Gardens is preparing to blanket its 55-acre grounds in more than 100,000 pumpkins this fall, and for the first time, visitors will also be able to wander a brand-new river of marigolds winding through the gardens. Cheekwood Harvest runs September 19 through November 1, and tickets go on sale Tuesday, August 11.
According to WZTV, the debut Marigold River display will feature more than 2,500 flowers in red, orange and yellow, planted between the Bradford Robertson Color Garden and the Arboretum Lawn. The festival will also include 5,000 yellow, orange, red and white chrysanthemums scattered throughout the grounds, giving the estate a full seasonal color palette to match its pumpkin displays.
Pumpkin Village and Three Pumpkin Houses Anchor the Arboretum Lawn
The heart of the festival, Pumpkin Village, sits on the Arboretum Lawn and includes three distinct pumpkin houses this year, per the station's report. Those structures feature thatched and cedar roofs, trailing vines, and pumpkins in orange, white, green and pink, creating a photo-ready backdrop for the estate's more than 100,000 pumpkins sourced from local farms.
That volume of pumpkins reflects a broader regional harvest: Tennessee maintained more than 2,000 harvested acres of pumpkins as of 2024, according to the USDA Economic Research Service, part of a national pumpkin crop that topped 1.44 billion pounds across nearly 69,000 acres that year. Fall visitors carving their own jack-o'-lanterns at home are tapping into the same specialty-crop economy that stocks Cheekwood's displays each September.
Scarecrow Trail Brings Back Community-Made Characters
The Scarecrow Trail returns with 15 scarecrows this year under the theme Once Upon a Harvest, with figures designed by local artists, schools and community groups, the article notes. A panel of judges selects the winning entries, turning the trail into a community showcase as much as a Halloween attraction.
Cheekwood Harvest also brings back Harvest Nights, held every Thursday from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. between September 24 and October 29. Those evenings offer illuminated garden walks, garden games, live music, food trucks and seasonal cocktails, along with pumpkin-carving demonstrations conducted by Lundy Cupp, per the same account. The Harvest Nights series wraps with the Bootanical Bash costume contest and dance party on October 29.
Multicultural Festivals Round Out Six Weeks of Programming
Beyond the pumpkins and scarecrows, Cheekwood Harvest folds in several of the estate's signature cultural events, including the Day of the Dead celebration, the Japanese Moon Viewing, and the Halloween Pooch Party, alongside Harvest Weekends featuring live music. The Day of the Dead celebration in particular has deep roots at the estate: it was created in 2000 to serve Nashville's growing Hispanic community and has grown from a five-hour event into a two-day multicultural festival, celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2024, according to Visit Music City.
The Japanese Moon Viewing, or Otsukimi, takes place in the Shōmu-en Japanese Garden, which was originally established in 1977 and redesigned in 1990 by landscape architect David Harris Engel. The festival is co-hosted annually in partnership with the Consulate-General of Japan in Nashville and the Japan-America Society of Tennessee, with programming that has included traditional tea ceremonies, mochi pounding and calligraphy.
A Nationally Ranked Garden Rooted in Maxwell House Fortune
Cheekwood's grounds carry a history that stretches back nearly a century. The estate was built between 1929 and 1932 as a private residence for Leslie Cheek Sr. and Mabel Wood Cheek, funded by wealth from the family's Cheek-Neal Coffee Company, creators of Maxwell House Coffee, which sold to Postum in 1928 for $40 million, according to Wikipedia. The estate opened to the public as a botanical garden and art museum in 1960 after being donated by daughter Huldah Cheek Sharp and her husband, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.
Today Cheekwood is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums and recognized as a Level II Arboretum, housing 12 distinct gardens and a 7,000-piece permanent art collection, per Trip.com. In April, USA Today ranked Cheekwood #9 on its national list of the top 10 botanical gardens in the United States, based on reader votes and an expert panel, as reported by the Rutherford Source.
The estate welcomed 380,000 visitors in 2024, ranking among the top five most-attended attractions in Nashville, and it invests more than $1.5 million annually in community outreach programming, according to Cheekwood. Attendance had previously reached a record 435,000 in 2021. Cheekwood also maintains ties beyond its own grounds — the botanical garden partners on an 18,000-square-foot ornamental garden at Riverfront Park, part of the new greenway bridge that opened downtown earlier this year.
Planning a Visit
Cheekwood Harvest tickets go on sale Tuesday. Non-member daytime general admission ranges from $20 to $29 depending on whether historic mansion access is included, and visitors need timed-entry reservations along with a $5 per-vehicle parking fee, per Cheekwood's ticketing information. Members receive free general admission. Photography for this year's festival preview was provided by Caitlin Harris, with reporting from Sydney Keller for WZTV.
