Longwood

December 18, 2023

The vision for Longwood Gardens, a magical place in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, dates to 1700, when a Quaker farmer named George Peirce purchased 402 acres of farmland from William Penn’s colonial government. For more than 200 years his descendants cultivated a rich tract of plants and trees on the land, called Peirce’s Park. By 1906 the space was threatened by a logging business.

Pierre DuPont, the then-36-year-old heir to the DuPont family fortune, stepped in and purchased 202 acres of the park, saving it from the loggers. He laid out plans for what is now Longwood’s Flower Garden Walk.

By 1921 he had completed work on the Conservatory. By 1927 he had built an Italian Water Garden with 600 jets in nine individual displays. Du Pont kept buying land.

Every city has its parks and gardens that give spiritual respite both to locals and visitors. Some are famous as beacons of history and culture: Hyde Park and the Bois de Boulogne, among the great urban greenspaces of Europe; New York’s Central Park, Philadelphia’s Fairmont, Boston’s Garden, Chicago’s Grant Park, others.

Woodlands, whether vast or humble, may soothe the aching of human hearts. We walk through our greenspaces, hoping not only to separate from the raucous pace of the city, but also to find in flowering living things a clue to what is good and hopeful in our world.

In the mid-1930s Du Pont’s garden, roughly between Philadelphia and Wilmington, Del., had grown to 926 acres. Today it occupies more than 1,000 acres. Du Pont died in 1954 at 84. By then he had completed plans for the Longwood Foundation, a non-profit that operates the Gardens and its programs offering horticultural education, concerts, and special events.

Building continued. In 1957 Longwood created a new Christmas display in the Exhibition House, filled with red, white, and pink poinsettias, as well as white lilies, hyacinths, and others.

Since 1960 the Christmas display has showcased gorgeous bursts of winter-flowering begonia, lilies, cineraria, kumquats, and lemon, orange, and grapefruit trees.  By 1984 Christmas at Longwood featured more than 80 trees and 60,000 lights.

Longwood takes its name from “Long-wood” a wooded area where escaped slaves could find shelter before the Civil War. The drive to Longwood from any direction is across the rolling meadows of southeast Pennsylvania’s farmland, much of which is still owned by heirs to the area’s railroad, coal, and heavy industry heritage. From the south rural roads curl past massive estate homes through tiny places like Coatesville, Media, and Concordville in that lovely, near-empty country.

Longwood, du Pont’s legacy to the region and the world, is a miracle of botanical artistry, populated by more than 10,000 plant species. The place transports the visitor, young or old, to awed appreciation of nature’s sublime beauty. We visited with son Michael and daughter-in-law Caroline, curators of nature at their nearby home, along with thousands of others, on a drizzly December afternoon. The air was cool but bracing.

The vastness of the Longwood space creates the perception of privacy amid forests and meadows deftly touched by soft pastel lighting. We strolled east from the visitor’s center along a lake, past the Rose Arbor Display and Wildlife Tree. At a bend in the path we paused to warm ourselves, with a dozen other snugly dressed folks, at a roaring firepit.

We turned up a steep trail that offered a view, framed by trees, of the broad Longwood Meadow, now lying fallow. We walked through the Pierre du Pont home which, amid the cheerful Christmas brilliance, recreates his work and family living spaces, with graphics posted describing the history of the place. We moved on.

The Conservatory is the heart of Longwood and the centerpiece of Longwood Christmas. The East Conservatory is set off by the rich luminescence of evergreens, reds, and whites, mounted on holly and fir, the walkways lined with 4,600 plant species, many of them exotic and tropical. A pipe organ filled the place with traditional Christmas music.

The crowds pressed in, adults taking photos, children thrilled by the cascading loveliness; all heartened, renewed by the richness of nature surrounding us. At the south end we turned into a hall festooned with orchids in an explosion of nature’s most brilliant colors, a massive orchid centerpiece suspended above.

As darkness fell we continued around a loop of dazzling light past the Tunnel Light Display and spectacular Gardener’s Tree. The glowing trees lined dark meadows and seemed to light our way in gentle blues, whites, and pinks.

The chill had diminished, we found a soothing, mystical serenity in the quiet beauty as we strolled with other visitors, some pushing strollers and wheelchairs. Together we made our way back around the loop, as a joyful sense of the Season spread far from this vast, peaceful, lovely place.