A gated entrance with a winding quarter-mile drive through a six-acre estate sets the tone for the Flower Magazine 2025 Show House in Nashville, Tennessee. This year’s property is a stately colonnaded home built in 1999, newly renovated by architectural firm Pfeffer Torode. As always, the show house—helmed this year by AD100 and AD PRO Directory talent Corey Damen Jenkins as design chair and Ariella Chezar as floral chair—pairs designers with floral artisans to create botanically informed interiors. Proceeds from the house, which features the work of 23 design studios, raises funds for The Next Door Recovery, an organization providing affordable, gender-specific addiction treatment for women in a faith-based environment.
Last-Minute Heroics
For Jenkins, the show house came with a dash of drama. He and his team had the challenge of simultaneously installing the equestrian-inspired study here while also working on the dining room for the Kips Bay Decorators Show House in New York. “It was a whirlwind of flights, deadlines, and caffeine,” Jenkins says. Adding to the pressure, the églomisé glass top of his study’s Maitland-Smith coffee table, which had arrived intact, mysteriously shattered two days before the public opening. “Thankfully, Jay Paschall [the CEO of Maitland-Smith] came to the rescue, personally driving eight hours from North Carolina with a replacement top,” the designer tells AD PRO. Now that’s design dedication! The resulting room is a master class in sophisticated pattern play, combining damask, geometric, houndstooth, tartan, and animal print patterns.
Designer Aldous Bertram’s cheery English garden themed powder room and hallway (incorporating chintz wallpaper and fabric by London-based designer Nicole Fabre and Espalier paper by Soane Britain on the ceiling) also involved a last-minute frenzy. When a mirror he’d planned on failed to materialize, he built and painted a punchy pedimented mirror in Yves Klein-blue himself using materials from Home Depot. “Nothing like an emergency to inspire creativity!” he says.
An apt appreciation of flora
In a secondary bedroom, DuVäl Reynolds of Virginia-based DuVäl Design debuted his wallcoverings collaboration with Paul Montgomery: a painterly, ethereal European scenic in soft, romantic hues. His goal was to “evoke a sense of wistful nostalgia, as if Alice has abandoned Wonderland, grown up, and built a life in the real world,” says the AD PRO Directory designer. Other moments of fantasy includes Atlanta-based Forbes Masters’ glamorous pool lounge, where a metallic botanical wall covering plays off fringed upholstery and fur throws.
