Last week we took a family trip to Alabama for my son’s sporting event and I took advantage of being in that part of the world to head over to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where a small but active group of Fellows is developing several initiatives. As previously announced, their school art project was awarded an RSA Catalyst Grant. Another emerging initiative centers around the 300+ acre natural garden, arboretum and nature center created in the 1920s by John and Margaret Chambliss and poetically named Reflection Riding.
On this trip I was able to see Reflection Riding for myself, and was introduced to some fascinating history about the Chambliss Family, their passion for nature and conservation, and their involvement with the RSA. In the 1950s and 60s, about the time they opened their nature park to the public, they created a trust fund to sponsor a program of RSA Reflection Riding Lectures. Even then the RSA was concerned about “the unchecked spoilation of town and country and interested in fostering the care of the countryside”. The program was well received and in 1967 George E. Mercer, then secretary of the RSA, visited Reflection Riding, where there is a plaque dedicated to the Society – a quite unexpected corner of a foreign field that is forever RSA.
In 1972, the Chambliss’ son Jac, a life Fellow, gave a lecture on “The Therapy of Landscape” at the RSA. Jac died last month at the age of 99 and the stewardship of Reflection Riding passes in part to family member Nelson Irvine, also a life Fellow. Nelson is developing a plan to re-introduce the Reflection Riding lectures.
Lynn
