Is Moss Mountain Farm About To Become The Next Blackberry Farm?

Moss Mountain Farm was designed as a ‘Ferme Ornee’ or ‘Ornamental Farm’ in the spirit of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

LITTLE ROCK, AR., August 19, 2024— Moss Mountain Farm, the 600- acre organic farm and home of PBS presenter, landscape designer, and conservationist P. Allen Smith, is generating buzz as the potential next Blackberry Farm.  Situated outside of Little Rock on the last large bluff-top track of land on the Arkansas River, Smith’s retreat has been a popular destination with design-centric, garden- loving tourists, attracting over 7,000 visitors annually. 

“For the past 15 years, the comment we hear most from our new, visiting friends is that they wish they could stay longer,” reports Smith.

Inspired by his deep Arkansas roots and appreciation for the land’s natural gifts, Smith’s homestead is filled with gardens and, orchards and is punctuated with river vistas, which inevitably draws comparisons to some of the country’s most beautiful and historic properties.  With the introduction of tours and hospitality at Moss Mountain Farm, comparisons to Blackberry Farm, Monticello, and Mt. Vernon has become more frequent.  

Blackberry Farm in eastern Tennessee is one of America’s top resort destinations for the affluent, known for its natural beauty, luxe accommodations, and locally sourced culinary offerings. Many a developer has suggested Smith create a unique variation of Blackberry Farm with an emphasis on connectedness to the land, sport, mindfulness, security, and organic food.  They point to the exceptional aspects of the Farm, such as its scale, privacy, views, water resources, and the 1.8 miles of the Arkansas River frontage just 40 minutes outside downtown Little Rock.  With multiple private golf clubs nearby (including the famed, ultra-exclusive, invitation-only Alotian Club), hiking at Pinnacle Mountain, fishing, shooting, canoeing, archery, and hunting on property, it has wide appeal.  

The Farm has easy access to major interstates, private hangers and a public airport, and the location is described by many as an ideal retreat for globe-trotting power families desiring a safe homestead to convene, eat well, relax and enjoy the sporting life.  As a bonus, the burden of sourcing a large support staff is eliminated as Smith’s private landscape and concierge teams are already working on property servicing his gardens, private guests, and hospitality clients.      

“Frankly, it wasn’t our plan to become a destination,” added Smith. “That is until we started hearing visitors from some of the leading hospitality brands asking us - ‘why not?’  Our original plan was to demonstrate to America how to create beautiful, healthy gardens, eat and farm organically, and live a better life through inspired experiences.  My observation has been that the public is yearning for connection to the land and to one another.  In this special place we have cultivated opportunities for those important moments to happen with friends and family.”

Commercially, Moss Mountain Farm is poised to become a must- visit destination for travelers who value sustainability but yearn for an authentic experience dipped in comfort. 

“Honestly, it wasn’t our plan to become a destination resort,” added Smith. “That is until we started hearing visitors from some of the leading hospitality brands asking us - ‘why not’?”

Moss Mountain Farm is poised to become a must visit destination for travelers who value sustainability, but yearn for an authentic experience dipped in comfort. 

Moss Mountain Farm is steeped in Arkansas history. The Quapaw tribe first settled the region.  It was later explored in the early 19th century by English naturalist Thomas Nuttall.  Nuttall was sent to, as it was known at that time, the ‘Arkansas Territory’ by the Philadelphia Philosophical Society of which Thomas Jefferson was a member and former president.  Later farmers homesteaded the land and Moss family settled the property.  Smith has integrated all of these stories into his design of the Farm, highlighting their contributions and embracing aspects of the site that make it singularly unique — right down to the dry stacked stones walls and color hierarchy used to distinguish and unify the buildings within his landscape.  

The 1840s Greek Revival farmhouse is the centerpiece of Moss Mountain Farm, which is preceded by a perfectly shaped 300-year- old Post oak.  The home was built new to demonstrate regionally appropriate vernacular architecture with state-of-the-art energy efficiency.  Mr. Smith’s history with Moss Mountain Farm starts in the early 2000’s when he quietly unified multiple parcels of land and began his work installing gardens.  Since the inception of the farm, Smith has been the decision maker with small and large design elements and has worked daily to refine the property, even to the extent of color- matching interior paint colors to local flora and fauna.  The net effect is that the newly built structures look as if they have been on the property for over 150 years and harmoniously integrate into the site. Guests are surprised to realize that the buildings are less than 20 years old.  

Today, Moss Mountain Farm is the private estate of Mr. Smith, who opens his home and farm to visitors for guided tours, cottage rentals, and private events.  P. Allen Smith is a design and farming leader who has embraced the natural surroundings and joyfully shares with guests on the property and on his television broadcasts.

Mr. Smith's Greek Revival-style home is filled with early 19th- century Southern-made furniture and guests are welcome to tour most rooms of the house.  Two dependencies catch the eye as one’s eye wanders above the Arkansas River from Smith’s famous screened back porch.  From this perch, one can see for over 40 miles across the gardened terraces, fountain, and the emerald green Arkansas countryside.  One of the dependencies is Allen’s artist studio, where he enjoys wood fires and paints during his rare downtime in the winter. The other dependency is a summer kitchen house, a frequent spot for Smith’s television taping (think of Julia Child in her Parisian home kitchen).  Viewers of Smith’s PBS show ‘Garden Home’ immediately recognize both buildings upon visiting the property as they feature prominently throughout each season of that program.  

The large ‘Grange Hall’ (or meeting place), is a wood paneled dining room where Smith entertains parties of a hundred or more.  In this location, he recently hosted visiting ambassadors to a rich dinner fully illuminated by candles, complete with local bluegrass band and poultry harvested from his private conservancy of rare poultry breeds.  Three additional cottages at Moss Mountain Farm are open to visit, one of which was built in coordination with Google-YouTube and is now both part of the Southern Living floor plan collection and offered as a high-efficiency home through Smith’s own Extreme Panel Technologies. Two other homes at Moss Mountain Farm are nearing completion and will demonstrate the latest in high efficiency, healthy and environmentally friendly construction.  

“Demonstrating energy conservation and sustainable practices is at the core of Moss Mountain’s values,” Smith explains.

Behind his home, visitors will find the terrace gardens filled with edibles and ornamentals commingling with fruit- bearing espaliered trees, vegetables, and herbs.  Smith uses a vast plant palette to delight his guests' senses and for an immersive and engaging walk.  Smith designed the garden complex to inspire, intrigue, and engender surprise.  With such evocative descriptions, how could one not be inspired to explore?  If one looks closely, there are very few straight lines in Smith’s ‘garden rooms,’ rather gentle curves control what is seen and only suggest what lies ahead without overt display. 

From ‘Daffodil Hill’ visitors can see one of the cottages on the farm. This energy efficient home is available for weekend rentals and its construction was featured on Smith’s popular TV program ‘Garden Home’ and YouTube. 

The gardening and farming practices at Moss Mountain Farm are on exhibit for all visitors to learn from, and have been chronicled extensively on Smith’s PBS television shows ‘ Garden Home,’ and ‘Garden to Table’.  The property also has an acre rose garden that serves as a conservancy for varieties of the first American developed rose, the Noisette.  The garden is preceded by an imposing vista creating a Hydrangea Allee, bordered by pyramidal hollies.  In the Spring, guests have a special treat as immediately adjacent to the house is an area affectionately named ‘Daffodil Hill”, which now has over 1,300,000 blooms that turn the entire hillside into a color block of shimmering buttercup, yellow, and gold in the early months each spring.  Smith adds tens of thousands of additional bulbs to the Farm every year.  Each season reveals its own delights; for example, Smith’s popular ‘Pumpkin House’ is crafted from over 50 varieties of pumpkins and squash — perfect ‘photo op’ for Farm visitors.

Further afield is the organic vegetable garden, which is laid out in an askew grid intersected with green tunnels, towering hoops with jade-colored flowers, roses, and other ornamentals.  Heirloom varieties of edibles are grown and harvested in this area, and it is also home to Smith’s flower-cutting garden.  Around Mother’s Day, guests are presented with a special treat; this is when the 40-plus varieties of peonies in the cutting garden are at their top bloom.    

The vegetable garden is sectioned into manageable garden beds that grow everything from asparagus to tomatoes and lettuce.  Besides all of the delicious foods that the garden produces, it also acts as an educational resource for Farm guests to learn about gardening, design, and organic gardening techniques. The produce grown in this space is used in meals for Farm guests, gifted to the families of the Farm team, and are also shared with local friends who own restaurants. 

At the end of the year, a special delight for Smith is to harvest cedar, pine, magnolia, and other botanicals from the Farm to decorate the main house, farm buildings, and entrance gates.   The farm is alive with seasonal activities that highlight the earth’s gifts and demonstrate sensible and responsible harvesting practices.

Visitors from around the country enjoy farm-to-table meals in Smith’s large dining room, the Grange Hall.  Farm-to-table dining at Moss Mountain Farm offers guests a unique opportunity to savor fresh farm-sourced meals. What sets Moss Mountain Farm apart is the emphasis on creating a connection between the food on the plate and the land it comes from in a decidedly uncommercial, casual-yet-elevated space.  Diners have the opportunity to witness the ingredients being grown and harvested just steps away from where they are served. 

Groups frequently gather at Moss Mountain Farm for thought leadership conferences.  The experience typically begins with a tour of the farm, where visitors can explore the gardens and learn about the various crops and animals raised on the property. Following the tour, guests enjoy lunch featuring dishes from Smith’s own Seasonal Recipes from the Garden cookbook and prepared by his personal chef.  The dining experience is reminiscent of (an enjoyable) family reunion at a beloved family homestead.  The farm team has been specially trained to offer guests engagement when desired but the respectful distance to create a welcoming environment, and one that also values guests’ individual experiences of the space and their individual time.

After enjoying a slice of his famous buttermilk pecan pie, guests visit  Poultryville to view and learn about Mr. Smith’s extensive efforts to conserve America’s early poultry breeds and the ‘how’ and ‘why’ behind his efforts to start the Heritage Poultry Conservancy.  Over 25 rare and endangered breeds are conserved on the property, where Smith improves each through selective breeding.  The importance of such preservation efforts was highlighted in a TEDx talk Mr. Smith delivered entitled ‘The End of Choice’.  Children are encouraged to visit this area to learn about the heritage breeds that established the primary protein source for this country and to be inspired by the beautiful diversity of plumage, shape, and form demonstrated across breeds.  

Clearly, the most poignant features that distinguish Moss Mountain Farm relative to Blackberry Farm come from Smith’s hand and vision — the unified landscape, gardens, tight integration of interiors with the land, history of the place, and Smith's unapologetic love of American history and the South.

Smith is no stranger to sensitive land development and collaborating with leading designers to create some of the world's most special places.  Design partners Allen is actively working with have contributed to such communities as Rosemary Beach, Seaside, and  Poundbury in the UK.  Closer to home, Allen and these partners have produced Hendrix Village in Conway, AR, Hartness in Greenville, SC, the Gardens of Somerset in Monroe, LA, and Burton in the mountain community of Clayton outside Atlanta.  

The product of Mr. Smith’s latest commercial venture, Extreme Panel Technologies (EPT), lends itself perfectly to the future of commercial and residential building.  The technology behind EPT--Structurally Insulated Panels--powers high-efficiency, healthy-air, mold-and-mildew resistant construction and has been described as the next generation of building technology for an industry plagued with labor, environmental, and energy concerns.  It's also the latest installment of exhibits at Smith’s farm.  The durability and strength of the EPT SIPs technology is perfectly suited for construction that will last generations. This is important to Smith, who laments the shortsightedness and waste associated with most construction, and the devastating effect disposable construction has had on American communities. To demonstrate the flexibility of the technology, Smith worked with traditional architectural designer Lew Oliver to blueprint and build two SIPs homes in a classical Greek Revival vernacular style at Moss Mountain Farm.  The two ‘Gate House Cottages,’ as they are known, are scheduled for delivery in the Fall of 2023 and will serve as exhibits for this compelling alternative to stick-built construction.  In a world desperate for advancing building practices, Smith is eager to share these examples, which follow in a natural progression of construction exhibits at the Farm and hint at what likely will come next for this special site. 

While there are always questions from visitors about the Farm’s future, Smith is in no hurry. Notable guests have landed their helicopters at the Farm and suggested the installation of a landing strip, while equestrians have offered a polo field and boarding facilities. Many guests have encouraged both, given the amount of land at the farm.  Smith, however, is more interested in speaking with passionate conservationists who are thinking about what to gift to the next generation rather than harvesting the largest profit.  He offers, “I’ve been a steward of this special place for over 20 years, the next 20 year chapter cannot be taken lightly, and will be executed only after a careful deliberation. I can proudly say that I have improved the land; my responsibility now is to partner with individuals who are as passionate as I am about creating something very special to ensure the future of this place and for all those who visit.”  We can’t wait to see what comes next.

About:  P. Allen Smith is a passionate designer and entrepreneur. His ventures include media, television, conservation development, land planning, and landscape design, and most recently, the manufacturing of structurally insulated panels. Smith has one of the longest and most successful programs on PBS, with two additional syndicated programs broadcast on all major US networks and internationally.  He is a trustee at Winterthur House Museum (Brandywine Valley, DE), and a former board member of the Royal Oak Society (the American arm of the British National Trust), he is also a member of the philanthropic Order of St. John.  He graduated from Hendrix College in Arkansas and attended the 

University of Manchester School of Architecture.  He presents regularly around the country, is a TEDx speaker, and author of six best- selling books (two more are scheduled for release, one of which is specifically on Moss Mountain Farm).  During his downtime, Allen paints, cooks, and tends to his flocks at his beloved Moss Mountain Farm.

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FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT MOSS MOUNTAIN FARM:

GOSWICK.COM

DAVID GOSWICK (832.358.5482)

USA@HouseX.org