Land clearing in Hermitage, TN

Thin soil over limestone

Hermitage sits just under 500 feet on the Central Basin floor, which runs on east from here through Wilson County. It’s Ordovician limestone with very little dirt on top. Out toward Couchville and Long Hunter you get the extreme version, bare rock with red cedar standing right on it. In a Hermitage yard the same thing happens slower. Let a lot off Tulip Grove Road go two summers without a bush hog and cedar comes up through the fescue in a stand, blackberry closing in behind.

Down in Clover Bottom

Clover Bottom is the Stones River floodplain between Percy Priest Dam and the river’s mouth at the Cumberland, and it sets the pattern for every low place around here. Bottom ground stays soft weeks after the high side of a property has dried out, and privet and honeysuckle own it. Take privet off at the stem and it sprouts back off the root crown heavier than it was. Getting it out means working under the surface, not scalping the top.

Back halves and old fencerows

A lot of what needs opening around Hermitage is a back half. A subdivision lot off Central Pike that drops into a wet draw. A fencerow older than the houses on both sides of it. A strip running down toward the Stones River Greenway that quit getting mowed and never started again. Ground like that needs two things back, line of sight and a surface a mower can cross, with the oaks and hickories left standing where they are.

Getting here from Lebanon

It’s twenty-one miles west, straight out I-40 to exit 221 or US 70 the whole way, signed Lebanon Pike where it comes through Hermitage. That’s the same corridor the Nashville and Eastern Railroad follows into the Hermitage station on Andrew Jackson Parkway. The town is named for Jackson’s farm, a thousand acres with a cedar drive cut through it, and cedar is still the first thing back on any ground nobody is watching.