Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania, USA  | - Click on the image above to view gallery
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 Orangery
Longwood Garden is actually in the nearby state of Pennsylvania and is one of the many attractions along the Brandywine Valley. In 1906 an historic arboretum was slated to be cut for lumber. Pierre S du Pont stepped in to purchase the property and save the trees. He then set about creating a garden encompassing more than 1,077 acres and it’s certainly not like any garden I have visited before. Pierre du Pont was the great-grandson of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont (1771-1834), who arrived from France in 1800 and founded the DuPont chemical company. Pierre turned the family business into a corporate empire in the early 20th century and used some of his resulting fortune to develop the Longwood property.
I spent the day wandering around the large areas of immaculately planted borders and couldn’t fail to be impressed by the colourful planting schemes. One of gardeners told me the displays change regularly with the seasons; it must be a lot of work to keep everything looking so well manicured. As much as all the carefully looked after flower borders were impressive, what I found was even more so was the wild flower meadow. The area was vast but even on a hot day (in the high 80s) I walked around the mown grass paths and really enjoyed seeing all the wild plants, while watching the butterflies and dragonflies, and listening to Song Sparrows and Red-winged Blackbirds that were feeding on the tall grasses. I’m told this area looks really impressive in late summer when the Black-eyed Susan and Joe Pye Weed is in flower.  Wildflower Meadow  Pretty Dragonfly.
After my walk around the meadow I was ready for my lunch, which I enjoyed inside in the coolness of the Terrace Restaurant, and it set me up nicely to explore the spectacular four-acre conservatory which I had expected to be quite hot inside but found the atmosphere surprisingly pleasant, probably due to the amount of water features. What I hadn’t expected to see inside was a lawn which I’m told has to be replaced quite regularly. Longwood's conservatory is one of the world's great greenhouse structures. It shelters 20 indoor gardens and 5,500 types of plant. The impressive display of water lilies from around the world was beautiful as were the dragonflies that were busy around the pools, which were dyed black to show the impressive blooms off. It certainly took a long time to take in all that the conservatory had on show.
 The impressive Conservatory building  Tree Ferns
During the day there are fountain shows, which is certainly something I’ve never seen before. The main fountain garden was developed by Pierre S du Pont to rival those he had seen in Europe. Hundreds of fountains re-circulate 10,000 gallons of water per minute. Several times a day there is a show to music which I watched along with another show set to patriotic music at the open air theatre.
Martha picked me up as arranged to take me back to Wilmington at the end of a really enjoyable day. I’m pretty certain that whatever the time of year a visit to Longwood Gardens would be a really good day out and every time you visit you would find something new to delight you.
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What a beautiful album. Edith would have loved it there.
REgards,
Dave