GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE UPGRADE AT THE FARMERS MARKET
The Nashville Farmers Market, located in the heart of downtown Nashville, has long served as a prominent gathering place for residents across the city—a hub for fresh, local food and a space where community, culture, and commerce intersect. But like many spaces built before the rise of green infrastructure and low impact development (LID) practices, its design still reflects an era that prioritized cars over people and pavement over plants.
Redeveloped in the early 1990s, the site is dominated by impervious paved surfaces. To combat flooding and pollution entering local streams and rivers, Metro Code now requires new developments to manage stormwater runoff on their property with green infrastructure such as permeable pavement, tree wells, or bioretention basins; however, this policy does not apply retroactively. Even so, the Nashville Farmers Market is taking proactive steps to improve its environmental footprint. This Depave project was proposed by the NFM’s Executive Director, Darrell Lane, as part of a broader vision to make the Nashville Farmers Market more holistically aligned with the values of its vendors and visitors.
According to Metro Nashville’s most recent Urban Tree Canopy Assessment, 82% of the downtown area is classified as unsuitable for tree planting because it’s covered in roads, buildings, and other paved infrastructure. That’s in stark contrast to the citywide average, where only about 20% of land is unable to be planted. This means that growing the urban forest downtown requires intentional interventions, such as removing asphalt and rethinking how we utilize space. Through projects like this one—where pavement is replaced with soil, native plants, and trees—we’re not only restoring the canopy where it’s desperately needed, but also setting a model for how to reclaim hardscaped environments for a healthier, greener city.
CONVERTING HARDSCAPE TO LIVING LANDSCAPE
In February 2025, the Compact removed 1,950 square feet of asphalt from the Nashville Farmers Market property– much of it from areas that had never been designated for parking or active use. The five new tree wells created were strategically placed to improve parking lot conditions for marketgoers, providing relief from oppressive heat in otherwise shadeless areas, without sacrificing any of the parking lot’s utility.
The depaving process began with saw-cutting the pavement, followed by careful removal of the asphalt and compacted gravel sub-base. The Compact’s Field Team then reconditioned and amended the soil beneath by adding a bioblend soil mix engineered for high infiltration and water-holding capacity. The resulting areas of exposed soil were primed to accommodate new plant life and absorb large amounts of stormwater that would’ve previously flowed over the impervious parking lot, becoming runoff.
The two largest depaved areas were two large no-parking zones located at the downslope edge of the lot, where stormwater naturally flows before entering the gutter and storm drain system. Though originally designated as no-parking zones to allow large trucks to turn safely, these areas were frequently unused or illegally occupied by cars. The Compact turned them into sloped planting beds filled with native grasses and wildflowers, including purple coneflower and little bluestem provided by Nashville Farmers Market neighbor Gardens of Babylon.
Additionally, three central areas were depaved in lower-use sections of the parking lot in order to provide shade to numerous parking spaces throughout the day. The shade these trees will provide when they mature may decrease parking lot temperatures up to 35°F on hot and sunny days. The tree wells were constructed with an innovative curbless design that enables the new trees to benefit directly from rainfall, thereby reducing the burden on the storm drain system.
Nine trees were planted in the newly depaved zones, including redbud, bald cypress, elm, and river birch—species selected for their resilience in challenging urban conditions. These trees tolerate a wide range of soil moisture levels, from periodic flooding to extended drought, making them ideal for spaces where stormwater patterns are unpredictable.
These plantings now serve as both visual enhancements and stormwater buffers, filtering and absorbing runoff before it flows into our sewer system and eventually the Cumberland River. This depave project will enable an estimated 161,167 additional gallons of stormwater to infiltrate the ground annually, thereby reducing runoff and improving water quality.
EXPANDING URBAN CANOPY IN DOWNTOWN NASHVILLE
To complement the depaving effort, the Cumberland River Compact planted an additional 60 new trees at the North Nashville Farmers Market. These trees were planted in support of the Root Nashville campaign, a public-private partnership to plant 500,000 trees across Davidson County by 2050. The Compact is the campaign’s lead operational partner, and this planting was made possible through funding from Metro Water Services.
The need for trees in North Nashville is urgent: the surrounding downtown area is dominated by 67.9% impervious surface and just 12.8% tree canopy, contributing to a heat index 8.5°F higher on average than surrounding rural areas. These environmental conditions pose health and livability challenges, especially in a high-traffic space like the Farmers Market.
The entire planting project included 24 different tree species, carefully selected for both resilience and visual appeal. Choosing a wide array of species provides critical biodiversity and makes areas more resistant to pests, diseases, and climate stressors; the diverse forest will also display a variety of spring blossoms and vibrant fall color for marketgoers to enjoy. This balance ensures the new urban forest is both ecologically strong and welcoming to the thousands of people who visit the Farmer’s Market each year.
