American Idyll

What's great about Blackberry Farm, a small hotel in rural Tennessee, is what you can't do there. Sure, the 4,200-acre retreat has activities: yoga and spa treatments, cooking classes and hiking, fly-fishing and miniature donkey petting. And you'd probably want to plan your day around the dining-room meals, which are equal parts comfort food and artisanal artistry, with meats from Buckhead Beef, cheeses from California and wines from everywhere grapes grow.

But at Blackberry, you can't hear traffic or feel the thrum of the power grid under your feet. You can't worry about comfort in one of the gorgeous rooms or cabins, no two alike yet all stocked with snacks you want to eat, art you want to own, and beds you want to sleep in. You can't worry about anything, really, because the 300-person staff is ready to fill a request almost before you've formed it. An entire afternoon can slip by while you sit on the veranda soaking in the panorama of the Smoky Mountain foothillsand you can't get enough of a view like this.

Pictured above, a custom-made cypress picnic table is topped by mint-julep cups (from Bennett Galleries) filled with flowers from the garden.