Rick Jenkins, Virgil Vaughn, and Rice collaborated with Colonial Designs last year to re-create the easy elegance of a blooming Southern garden under the tent's canopy. Tent poles were swathed in muslin and decorated at the base with flowering bulbs and live plants. Oversized baskets of magnolia, orchids, hydrangea, and japonica hung from the tent roof. Sections of the tent were separated by banks of boxwood and live trees. "We wanted to create a garden room in the middle of that wonderful pastoral landscape," explains Jenkins. "With such a huge luminous tent, it was important to bring in as much color as we could. It was almost like making a temporary greenhouse."
The breakfast's blue-and-green color palette was inspired by colorful stoneware julep cups and punch bowls lent to the Foundation by Louisville Stoneware, a longtime local pottery maker and Foundation supporter. Each informal table decoration was different--potted gerbera daisies, azalea topiaries, ferns, moss, and apples. The menu carried out the regional theme--sliced beef tenderloin with horseradish and bourbon sauce, country ham, smoked salmon, fresh steamed asparagus with lemon-caper sauce, fried apples, garlic-cheese grits, country biscuits with sausage gravy, sliced tomatoes, and Derby pie. Sprigs of fresh mint sprouted from juleps made with Woodford Reserve bourbon.
For nearly three hours, the tent always buzzes with excited conversation and speculation, but by noon the recessional is well under way as guests roll up their programs and head across town to Churchill Downs for the race that is sometimes called "the two most exciting minutes in American sports." Before the dogwoods fade, however, planning will begin for the next year's Derby Day breakfast. "It's a pleasure every year," says Starks. "It's something we look forward to again and again."
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