22 Mar 2016 Nixon Flower Farm celebrates nature

by Jan Spann
Callie Sterling photos

Several hundred feet from the road and hidden behind heritage trees and shrubs, you’ll find Nixon Flower Farm in the middle of Jacksonville.

In 1985, Wally and Dana Daniels Nixon, then both practicing lawyers in Little Rock, built a “new old” farmhouse on family land. The Graham/Nixon farm has been in Wally’s family since 1903.

The two-story home exterior features cypress harvested from the property. The interior uses old windows and doors purchased from a family friend, which gave the home a historic appearance from its inception. The home’s design includes passive solar features like large southern windows, overhangs to block summer sun and covered/screened porches on the north and west sides.

The home’s first floor includes 100-year-old bricks from the Tennebaum warehouse used as the flooring, and kitchen appliances to cook for a crowd, including a circa 1945 Chambers commercial gas stovetop salvaged from Mena. The u-shaped island includes a deep triple sink, plus lots of countertop and storage. A service counter — perfect for buffet — serves as a pass-through to the keeping room. Silk dining room curtains from Dana’s grandparents’ plantation home can be found in a downstairs bathroom.

Innovative style is found throughout the home. The formal dining room, which seats 10, features embossed wallpaper that was stained and shellacked to mimic leather, continuing the aged atmosphere of the home. Furnishings include heirloom pieces from both sides of the couple’s family as well as treasured mementos from their travels. Vintage wallpaper and antique bathroom fixtures continue the historic feel of the home.

The formal living room features an antique player piano that has been in the family for years. While it doesn’t work now, the many rolls of ragtime and classic tunes once banged out songs for wonderful group sing-alongs. A beautiful wet bar of walnut and cypress cut from the farm stands across from the piano, and these two pieces frame the doors out to the north screened-in porch. Along the porch are comfortable vintage chairs and sofas that invite a visitor to sit a while.

Wally has been an audiophile since junior high, and his eclectic LP and CD collection covers a wide variety of musical genres, especially those artists whom the couple has enjoyed through the years. The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen are just a few of the artists the couple has followed to concerts in many different venues.

The couple’s book collection is just as deep and diverse, and one of the interesting features of the hallway leading from the dining room to the living room is an inset bookshelf. In a home that makes thoughtful use of space, this hallway wall became a useful focal point in what would be an otherwise blank space.

In some cases, the couple’s assortments would be considered a hoard, but Wally and Dana have preserved their collections in a way that makes it fun to browse through the music, books and photographs of their families through many generations. This is a family proud of its history, and their home reflects the whimsy and affection for friends, family and events.

Two of the three upstairs bedrooms feature windows that can be opened to the keeping room below for air movement, and the upstairs hallway is also open to the vaulted ceiling and room below. The home’s envelope design brings a chimney effect so that the heat from the Vermont Castings fireplace stove in the keeping room will be pulled up and around the interior space. While the layout was an architect’s, Dana tweaked the design for enhanced flow and function.

The master suite includes walk-in closets and a bathroom. The 1940s wallpaper from New York works well with Dana’s great-grandmother Rose’s Mallard bed with a distinctive high headboard. A bed from Dana’s other great-grandmother is the guest bedroom’s focus. A third bedroom, the laundry room and a hall bathroom complete the upstairs. An iconic member of the family — a leather hippo named Stewart (actually intended as a fireplace bench) — stands guard in the upper hallway.

During the building process, Dana served as the general contractor so the construction would be finished to their vision. Dana also learned to weld, because she had designs planned for both the home and gardens.

Walking from the front door toward the north side, two large wood and iron gates, which Dana crafted, open to a large hydrangea garden and a concrete pool with a tiered fountain that holds various water plants, including swamp iris. The guest will also find additional garden nooks sheltered by large shade trees and spots to enjoy nature. Seating throughout the gardens and on the expansive screened west porch encourage guests to sit a spell.

“We are ‘old house’ people,” Dana said. “I spent my childhood between Little Rock and my grandparents’ Mississippi County plantation and my great-grandmother’s houses in Osceola and Fayetteville. I was trained to work hard and celebrate that. We wanted a house that would be comfortable for an intimate dinner party as well as a blowout for 400.”

The early design included garden construction in several areas around the home, with a master plan for later expansion. An herb and flower garden immediately to the home’s east is centered with a pond with a mill wheel and includes brick paths from which to harvest the plants. Behind the house to the north is a living fence to screen what lies beyond. Forty-foot crape myrtles anchor this bed, with shrubs and perennials that will offer blooms and interest through the seasons.

A pergola with a bricked floor secures the northwest side of the backyard garden and leads a guest to the many garden rooms beyond the home’s original lawn and garden. The exterior gardens can’t be fully seen from the house, and they invite a guest to enter through an arbor covered with autumn clematis. The gardens’ design incorporates perennials, shrubs and trees that offer blooms from early February through November.

In 1990, Wally and Dana welcomed their daughter Abigail to the family. Soon after, Dana left full-time law practice, built more gardens and began selling cut flower bouquets with a booth at the Little Rock River Market as well as home deliveries. The rich soil for the cut gardens was further enhanced with mulch from Jacksonville’s recycle center. The gardens quickly attracted pollinators, and two hives on the property have improved the gardens’ pollination.

Hellebores, forsythia, quince, spirea, early magnolias, daffodils, tulip and narcissus burst forth with first spring blooms. Peach and pear tree blossoms soon follow, along with azaleas and dogwoods, and the riot of color continues through spring with other flowering shrubs and trees, roses, peonies, dianthus and various wildflowers.

Summer flowers begin with the hydrangeas in early June and continue through September. They include practically everything that will grow in Central Arkansas and do well as a cut flower and as a haven for butterflies and pollinators. Natives like mountain mint, cosmos, rudbeckia and wild verbena bring the garden to life with brilliant colors.

Fall brings Sweet Annie, tickseed coreopsis, asters, goldenrod, graybeards, marvelous salvias and chrysanthemums that mix with still blooming summer flowers. Dana also loves celosias and zinnias and grows many rows amid the large vegetable garden just for cutting.

In 2000, the family moved to Little Rock to be near Dana’s widowed mom and Abigail’s school. Since its early days, the farm has frequently hosted the Nixon annual family reunions, and as Wally’s first cousin, I’ve enjoyed seeing our grandparents’ farm become a place where old memories remain, where my grandfather’s workshop continues to be used by family and friends, and where new memories are made.

The family now splits its time between the Little Rock home and the Jacksonville farm, and they also travel frequently. New Orleans is a favorite spot, as Abigail is now a Tulane grad student continuing her Latin American studies. The family visited Cuba a few years before last year’s official reopening when Abigail spent a semester at the University of Havana.

Having spent 30-plus years sharing the farm with friends and family, Dana and Wally have also opened the grounds as an event facility. Four generations have worked this farm and enjoyed events here. Their hard work and respect for nature make the farm a celebratory experience for others to enjoy as well.

A Conway resident, Jan Spann has been gardening for 20-plus years and has been involved with the Faulkner County Master Gardeners for 11 years. She and her husband, Randy, have five children and eight grandchildren.