I am 18 miles northeast of downtown Knoxville, and you'd be welcome, although we are far, far from spring and fall bloom. The University of Tennessee Trial gardens are not that far off your direct route. They have some huge Climbing Tea roses (bigger than I can grow them) as well as perennials, shrubs and annuals. Come down I-75 and turn west on I-640, then come back to downtown on I-40. Take the Alcoa Highway exit and then the second exit ( Neyland Drive) and the garden is about 0.2miles ahead on your left. Their soil is superb (river fill and they have a microclimate that I envy. And there're places for the kids to run around. Then to get back to I-40 east bound, you follow Neyland Drive east and it will take you to I-40 and on to Gatlinburg. If when you leave Gatlinburg and want to come by my place, I'll send you my phone number and directions. It's cross country and if the weather's great, it's beautiful. If it's rainy, you'd take the less scenic but safer route.

Oak Ridge is liberal and so non-judgemental that their highly rated high school has no Valedictorians,etc. The older part of town was one of the places where Milky Spore was tested, and to this day, there are no Japanese Beetles there. The west side of Knoxville is more liberal, lots of restaurants (sadly most are chains), and largely newcomers. Huge numbers of half backs (people who retired to Florida, couldn't stand the heat and moved half way back north). Judgemental is not something that fits this part of the world. Mostly folks don't care to know your business. I met a couple, several years ago , who introduced themselves as the Lesbians who lived on the hill, and who were sure I must have heard about them. No, I hadn't heard anything about them and they were surprised that I didn't know who they were. I really don't think anybody cared. But, I've met folks who know my house and my roses, and don't know me. Someone from an adjacent county whose niece had driven him to see our house and how we were remodeling and rebuilding it because he had mentioned seeing the house so many days on his way to the ferry at the bottom of our hill. Another person, when I was launching DH and friends to kayak down the river, stopped to make sure my car was ok, and when I told him where I lived, "Oh, yeah, the old white house that's now yellow and being fixed up right nice." You will find educated, both with and without book learning. Common sense is harder to predict. There are still neighborhoods where doors aren't locked at night. Neighborliness is expected in some neighborhoods, and not in others. (Remember, I lived in New Orleans, and my T-shirt tackiness threshold is both higher and lower than most folks'.)(Lower in what I find irritating, higher in tolerance of some of the off color messages.) My red chinas look especially good today and the noisettes aren't slowing down. Take a look at the local rag, Metropulse, it's now on line and there was a real break out of voting patterns in one of the recent ones.

I have no experience shipping plants but would be willing to give it a try! Shoot me an email and we'll work out the details.

I visited there in spring, I enjoyed Cade's Cove a museum village circling old farm fields that you drive through, the trilliums were many varieties, there large swaths of phalacia and rock ledges were covered in silene virginica. What I didn't know was that Gatlinburg is the honeymoon spot for the south, with at least 13 marriage chapels, Dollywood, and 5000 hotel rooms! The smokies are magnificant as the sky line drive in the blue ridge was closed by winter storm debree we traveled back to NY through Ashland and stopped at the Biltmore estate.