OUTDOOR LIVING, THOUGHTFULLY CONSIDERED
A garden business with Nashville roots.
For Marcus Kerske and the team at Gardens of Babylon, the planted garden and the built landscape belong in the same conversation.
Marcus Kerske
Marcus Kerske is a founding owner and CEO of Gardens of Babylon. He continues a business vision begun with his father in 2003, leading a Nashville company with two familiar faces: the garden center near the Farmers’ Market and the landscape teams working across the surrounding area.
Those settings attract people at different moments. Someone may arrive looking for a plant for a windowsill; another household may need help reorganizing an entire yard. The company’s range connects an everyday interest in growing things with the larger work of landscape design.
The beginning
The business has grown around Nashville rather than around a single outdoor product. Landscape design, installation and continuing maintenance sit beside the garden center. That combination gives plants a visible place in the company’s identity, even when a project involves a pool, retaining walls or a kitchen.
Its residential work includes city lots as well as larger properties in places such as Brentwood and Franklin. The differences between those sites are substantial: a narrow urban garden and a planted hillside cannot be organized in the same way.
Around the design table
The company’s process moves from consultation to design and proposal, then to an installation kickoff. A project manager becomes the homeowner’s main contact during construction. Designs may be shown in two or three dimensions, and work can be discussed in phases.
That is useful for a household with a long-term plan and a near-term budget. The question is not simply which feature to build first, but whether the early work leaves room for the later pieces. Ongoing garden care is available after the final walkthrough.
A project that tells the story
In Nashville’s 12 South neighborhood, a small sloping yard needed drainage work before it could comfortably accommodate a kitchen, fire area and lawn. The resulting spaces have distinct purposes without feeling disconnected.
A Franklin entry handles a different problem: a narrow route between buildings. Retaining walls and landings turn the passage into a more considered arrival. Both projects are reminders that a landscape firm’s most valuable work may begin with the awkward part of a site.
Finding their kind of work
The practice brings drainage, irrigation and planting into projects that may also contain substantial masonry and outdoor rooms. These less conspicuous systems often determine whether the more photogenic parts will work well. A terrace needs a reliable base and a route for water; a planted slope needs more than an attractive arrangement on paper.
In the finished work, construction and greenery meet closely. Low walls become edges for seating, steps divide a slope into usable levels, and planting softens the boundaries around a gathering space.
Away from the plans
The garden center gives the business a public, everyday presence in Nashville. It is a place to encounter plants at a smaller scale than a construction project—and to remember that outdoor living can start with something as simple as choosing what to grow.
