An Outdoor Thanksgiving | Garden and Gun

Considering an outdoor Thanksgiving. Here are some tips from Garden and Gun...

An Outdoor Thanksgiving | Garden and Gun-

An Outdoor ThanksgivingBy Claire GibsonNovember 23, 2013

When temperatures cool off, we often ditch the deck and head for the dining room. But the South’s mild fall weather makes it possible to entertain outdoors well into the holiday season. We consulted Nashville designer Lauren Ledbetter for her suggestions on hosting a successful Thanksgiving dinner al fresco.


Photographs by brad + jen butcher

Start with Bourbon. Brown liquor never fails to keep your mind off the cold. Lauren suggests turning the deck into a designated spot for pre-dinner cocktails, handing each guest a warm welcome in the form of an old-fashioned.



Get out the toolbox. Finding furniture to seat 12 or more people outdoors is daunting. With a little ingenuity, Lauren and her friends created a tabletop from palettes and unused pieces of wooden fence. The legs are repurposed saw-horses and four-by-fours of weather-resistant cedar. For seats, they collected stumps from a nearby yard where neighbors were clearing trees and drilled a two-by-six board into the stumps to create a bench. Lauren recommends a run to the hardware store for deck screws if you plan on using your new furniture for more than one occasion. Unlike nails, they withstand the weather and never rust.



Let there be light. Predicting night’s early onset, Lauren lined the table with tea lights, fixed taper candles in empty wine bottles, and draped bulb lights in a nearby tree. “Just make sure to unscrew all the bulbs first,” she warns. “It’s a pain to reattach them in the tree, but the bulbs are so fragile, they’ll shatter during the hanging process if they hit a branch or each other.”



Start a fire. Once you know which way the smoke will blow, build a tee-pee style fire on a stand about eight feet from the table to avoid being smothered by ash. Use railroad ties to encircle the fire and encourage family and friends to share stories fueled by full stomachs and a few more digestifs.