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"For years Ben and Libby Page thought about owning a second home, but the idea was so unformed that they didn&amp;#039;t even have a specific location in mind. Then, in the spring of 2004, Libby&amp;#039;s mother rented a bus, hired a historian, and took the family out for a tour of Giles County, Tennessee, where Libby&amp;#039;s ancestors had lived for generations. Though only an hour away from the couple&amp;#039;s Nashville home, it was not an area in which either of the Pages had spent time. But after a day of viewing farms and family homesteads nestled in leafy, rolling hills, both were so taken with the countryside that they asked the historian to let them know if a piece of land and maybe a farmhouse ever became available. Barely two weeks later, they got the call: A mid-19th-century Greek Revival house on 54 acres, less than a mile from where Libby&amp;#039;s grandmother had grown up, was for sale. Ben, a landscape architect who has designed gardens from North Carolina to New Orleans to San Miguel de Allende, has a lovely walled city garden in Nashville. But ownership of the country house, which the couple named Brookside, meant that he could indulge in slightly more bucolic\u2014and far more expansive\u2014pursuits. The main garden, a boxwood parterre, is anchored by single-stem Muskogee crape myrtles and planted with grasses and lilies. In the sundial garden within, a bronze hawk sculpture is mounted on a walnut column that&amp;#039;s an exact copy of those on the house&amp;#039;s front porch. The cutting and vegetable gardens evoke Ben&amp;#039;s grandmother&amp;#039;s and great-grandmother&amp;#039;s gardens in Glasgow, Kentucky, where his own roots are. They&amp;#039;re also where he can be found almost every Saturday. Click here to see the gallery for &amp;quot;Cultivating New Ground: Ben Page&amp;#039;s Tennessee Garden.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;The big-deal moment for me comes at about four o&amp;#039;clock on Friday afternoon, when I realize I can get in the car and be out there in time to eat dinner,&amp;quot; Ben says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s my pressure release.&amp;quot; An early riser, he has Saturday breakfast on the screened porch the couple added to the house as part of a two-year renovation. &amp;quot;By daylight, I&amp;#039;m out in a garden setting, just as my grandmother was almost every day of her life.&amp;quot; Until late afternoon he can be found on his mower, weed-eating the fence rows, or on his knees in the vegetable garden, which features an heirloom-tomato collection, Indian corn and three varieties of sweet corn, Kentucky Wonder and other pole beans, lima beans, squash, okra, and three different kinds of cucumbers. In addition to zinnias, enormous marigolds, and celosia, the cutting garden contains bits of history: The peony collection includes plants from Ben&amp;#039;s grandmother&amp;#039;s garden, and a dramatic seven sisters rosebush from the original Brookside, the Italianate Revival house where Libby&amp;#039;s grandmother grew up. The rose, which has huge briars, is &amp;quot;vicious,&amp;quot; Ben says. &amp;quot;But it&amp;#039;s spectacular when in bloom.&amp;quot; Saturday evenings are usually given over to guests, who arrive in time for what the Pages dub the &amp;quot;sunset cruise.&amp;quot; Gin and tonics are mixed, wine is poured, and everyone piles in the John Deere Gator for a trip to the top of the hill as the sun begins to go down. Afterward, the group returns to the spacious kitchen to cook dinner, using vegetables from the garden and chickens raised nearby. Ben says Brookside&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;most glamorous period&amp;quot; was in the 1950s and &amp;#039;60s, when a couple from New York raised polo ponies and held tournaments on the property. These days the polo barn serves as a glorified garden shed, but it also did duty at a glamorous event of more recent times. Three years ago, to celebrate milestone birthdays of both Ben and Libby, as well as their daughter, Florence, the Pages threw a big bash. Dinner was served in a tent in front of the barn\u2014guests&amp;#039; beribboned table cards were tied to tomato cages just outside the entrance, and pots of thyme adorned the tables. Another, larger barn, its interior done up in white, with low upholstered sofas and chairs, was transformed into an after-dinner disco. It&amp;#039;s fitting that an event to mark family birthdays would also serve as a housewarming. After all, Brookside is about nothing if not family. &amp;quot;It all started on that beautiful spring day on the bus,&amp;quot; says Ben. &amp;quot;Until then, we had no idea our second home would coalesce around this historic setting or that it would be so closely tied to family.&amp;quot; Click here to see the gallery for &amp;quot;Cultivating New Ground: Ben Page&amp;#039;s Tennessee Garden.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elledecor.com/design-decorate/house-interiors/a5390/cultivating-new-ground-ben-pages-tennessee-garden-a/>