At Home With Melanie Smith Taylor

AT HOME WITH Melanie Smith Taylor Wildwood Farm’s bygone glory can still be felt in Germantown, Tenn.

Story and Photos By KAT NETZLER

Melanie Smith Taylor’s earliest memories of Wildwood Farm are steeped in mystique and magnetism. Long before she’d win Olympic gold or join the Show Jumping Hall of Fame, Taylor was just a naturally gifted, bareback-loving young horsewoman coming of age in the heyday of equestrian sport in western Tennessee. And Wildwood, in what’s now the Memphis suburb of Germantown, was the crown jewel of it all in the 1960s.

Only a handful of horses remain on the farm these days, enjoying their retirement in huge rolling fields. Melanie Smith Taylor keeps an eye on them from her many-windowed home.

Melanie Smith Taylor

Melanie Smith Taylor and green-thumbed longtime friends Phyllis and Dr. Ray Walther tend a large vegetable and flower garden at Wildwood Farm. This year’s plot included corn, okra, 100 tomato plants and enough zinnias to decorate a wedding.

As a young girl, Melanie Smith Taylor was enamored with Wildwood Farm, and today she not only lives there, but she is also stewarding the historic property toward permanent protection from development.

“I remember driving by when I was very young and thinking, ‘ at is the prettiest farm I’ve ever seen,’ ” recalls Taylor.

Little did she know that now, at 67, she’d have called the historic property home for nearly half her life.

Taylor got her rst pony at age 2 and grew up foxhunting, riding with the local Pony Club and showing at the venerable Germantown Charity Horse Show. Her horsemanship caught the eye of George H. Morris in the late 1960s, and she trained with him throughout her career, which spanned through the 1980s and took her to the upper echelons of international show jumping.

In 1978, Taylor earned the American Grandprix Association Rider of the Year title—prompting the organization’s leaders to abandon the separate “Lady Rider” category going forward—and her inspiring partnership with the famous Dutch Warmblood Calypso (Lucky Boy—Gamieka, Zilon) garnered individual bronze at the 1980 Alternate Olympics in Rotterdam (the Netherlands), the 1982 FEI World Cup Show Jumping Championship (Sweden) title and team gold at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

Taylor retired from active competition in 1987 and returned to Tennessee to care for her mother, Rachael Smith, who’d given

The barn at Wildwood was built in the early 1930s and features beautiful windows and doors and an aisle so wide it was often used as an indoor arena when starting young horses under saddle.

Favorite memories of a bygone era still hang in the barn office.

The hayloft of the barn originally included living quarters for grooms, a pulley elevator for lifting and storing carriages, and a lounge area that hosted parties and square dances. In the 1990s, Lee Taylor had the historic barn fitted with a sprinkler system to protect it from potential fire catastrophes.

While the adjacent polo field has long since grown over and returned to open pasture, recent brush clearing under the farm’s beautiful red oak revealed the decades-old cable used to tie ponies up in the shade and plenty of old balls as well.

Taylor her equestrian genes, as she battled Alzheimer’s disease. She explored new careers as a course designer, judge, breeder, trainer, coach and NBC Sports broadcaster. And Taylor took on one more title, too: wife. Raised in the same tight-knit equestrian community, she and skilled horseman Lee Taylor, who’d grown up on the magical Wildwood property she’d always admired, eventually came to see one another as soulmates. ey married in 1989 and embarked on a horse breeding and sales business that kept the farm

Melanie Smith Taylor and farm manager Steve Thaemert are passionate about preserving the unusual variety of foliage on the property, including this massive red oak that’s more than 200 years old. A professional arborist helps catalog and care for the trees on the farm.

The farm’s three miniature donkeys, Johnny, June and Cash, were gifts for Melanie Smith Taylor’s mother-inlaw, Audrey Taylor, who moved to Wildwood in the 1930s and lived there until her passing in 2012.

It may be mainly used for storage these days, but the main barn still makes a stately picture for lucky guests granted entry to the private property.

In remembrance of her Olympic partner Calypso, who died in 2002 at 29, Melanie Smith Taylor salvaged and reused his stall door, halter, bridle and hay rack in one of her guest bedrooms. The walls are even finished with a strawbased texture. bustling for more than a decade, with upwards of 120 horses on the property.

“We had a great life together,” Melanie said in a 2007 interview. “I was incredibly ful lled and totally happy. I stepped away from the show world, stopped traveling to be with Lee, and just did enough to keep my judge’s card and occasional TV commentary requests. I just loved our farm, being home and my life there.”

A Legacy To Protect

While it was once much larger, the Wildwood of today is still 350 acres— an impressive feat considering the erce encroachment of suburban development on all sides.

Melanie believes the land once served as a Civil War campground (based on historical records and treasures her longtime property manager, Steve aemert, has

Equestrian details abound in Melanie Smith Taylor’s home at Wildwood Farm. With few horses left on the property, she’s removed most of the tack and equipment from the barn but found creative ways to incorporate them in her home decor. The polo mallets belonged to her late husband, Lee Taylor.

The original house on the Wildwood estate was razed, but when Melanie Smith Taylor set about building a new home just a few years ago, she wanted to include plenty of historic and unique details. This floor in the bar area of her living room features wood slabs from trees harvested on the property. Melanie Smith Taylor and Calypso helped the U.S. team earn show jumping gold on their home turf at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

It’s a pleasant view from Melanie Smith Taylor’s living room. With a life so full of milestones and memories, a house almost isn’t enough. Melanie Smith Taylor relegated a few of them to the garage.

unearthed thanks to a metal detector).

Wildwood’s grand main brick barn was built at the height of the Great Depression, between 1932-1933, featuring stalls so big it was reported to be the only place the Budweiser Clydesdales would stop on their journeys between St. Louis and New Orleans.

Lee’s parents, Audrey and William Taylor, were married 65 years. ey rst met at the Devon Horse Show (Pa.) and settled in Tennessee in the 1930s, and they turned Wildwood into “a mecca for saddle horses,” Melanie says, with the help of famous gaited horse trainer Garland Bradshaw. e 1940s and ’50s saw plenty of foxhunting with the nearby Oak Grove Hunt, which led to the establishment of the Germantown Horse Show in 1947, and steeplechasing across Wildwood’s beautiful rolling pastures. In 1968, the Taylors dispersed all the saddle horses and turned their focus to oroughbreds. And soon, thanks to Lee’s polo prowess, the farm had several top-quality polo elds, and the family even stepped in to host the U.S. Open of Polo one year when problems arose with its usual setting in Oak Brook, Ill.

Melanie and Lee had been married for 16 years when he succumbed to a brain tumor in December of 2005, but she forged ahead with their shared dream to establish a horsemanship training program, TaylorMade Horsemanship, and she also helped create the U.S. Hunter Jumper Association’s Emerging Athletes Program. In addition, at the behest of her old friend and mentor Morris, Melanie took on the role of U.S. Equestrian Federation Developing Rider Tour chef d’equipe, earning the Chronicle’s 2007 Show Jumping Horseman of the Year title.

Today Melanie continues an impressive travel schedule for clinics and television commentaries, but she’s also devoting more of her time and energy to stewardship of Wildwood. While her plans for the farm haven’t been nalized yet, she’s exploring several avenues to secure it from any further development.

“We’re really trying to preserve not just the land, but the trees and the plants and the wildlife,” she says. “ e things that are just getting lost these days.”

Melanie Smith Taylor is well known in the horse world for her borderline obsession with longhaired dachshunds. She owns eight at a time, and she had this daybed built in her office, so they have plenty of room to sun themselves while she works. Wildwood serves as a retirement home for several horses, including a few sent south from Buffalo, N.Y., by Melanie Smith Taylor’s friend Susie Schoellkopf. But these two aged pals are the last remaining homebreds on the property, and they share the most picturesque pasture on the farm.

This sign, made from what’s believed to be a Civil War-era wheel frame found on the property, welcomes visitors to “Doxnwood,” Melanie Smith Taylor’s cheeky name for the home she shares with her eight long-haired dachshunds.