This just had to have a blog post of its own. Cheekwood botanical gardens in Nashville was one of my favorite things about visiting Music City. It boasts Nashville’s best botanical gardens, a fantastic Nashville art museum, and you get to see it all inside and outside of a huge mansion.

You will want to check before your stay if they have any events going on.

Cheekwood Botanical Gardens Nashville

So what are they!? It’s a big mansion owned by the Cheekwoods that has great gardens. The mansion is now a museum and you can walk through the house and look at artwork then wander the grounds. You can read all about the history of the family and how they got their fortune on the website.

My mom is a flower lover and can look at any flower and name it so this was also really fun for her. I needed some photos for Instagram (what else is new) so that was a bonus.

It’s incredibly photogenic and just really gorgeous. Of all the museums we visited in Nashville, this was my favorite place.

It was a pretty scorching day, at about 95 degrees of humid heat but was still worth walking around. On our way in, we saw a shave ice truck and thought we’d grab some on the way out… but it was gone! If you see it, have one for me.

There were a number of gardens within the Cheekwood botanical gardens like the Japanese gardens which had a bamboo forrest, herb gardens, and water gardens. You can grab map on the way in.

It’s easily accessible on Google maps and you pay at the entrance per person. You’ll need about two hours here but you could spend the whole day if you wanted to. We were only there for four days, so we spent about two hours here, maybe a little more. About half of that was outside and the other half was inside the mansion looking at art.

Art at Cheekwood

Normally, I speed through museums and kind of look as I walk but here I actually stopped and enjoyed almost all of the pieces that were hanging. Some were just beautiful! You could spend a lot of time in here if you wanted to.

trying to get Ben to take a picture with me

The gardens are located outside the city so if you drive to Nashville it works out well, but if you fly in you’ll have to take an Uber. It was about 20 minutes from downtown. If you’re here on a family vacation like I was this is a great option. If you’re here for a bachelorette party (like it seems almost everyone was) this might not be the best place to hang out. It’s lots of families and kids wandering around.

I know botanical gardens aren’t for everyone and of course, you might want to spend your time on Broadway listening to live music and kickin’ your boots up. Do what works for you!