Brandywine Valley

In Pennsylvania’s Brandywine Valley, Longwood Gardens has unveiled plans for a sweeping transformation of its core area of conservatory gardens. The $250 million project is the most ambitious revitalization in a century of one of America’s greatest centers for horticultural display. Adding new plantings and buildings across 17 acres, Longwood Reimagined: A New Garden Experience will expand the public spaces of the renowned central grounds and connect them from east to west, offering a newly unified but continually varied journey from lush formal gardens to views over open meadows. The project originates from a master plan developed in 2010 by West 8 Urban Design & Landscape Architecture with WEISS/MANFREDI Architecture/Landscape/Urbanism. Longwood has continued working with WEISS/MANFREDI as lead designer, in collaboration with Reed Hilderbrand, on Longwood Reimagined, which continues the institution’s history of commissioning and collecting outstanding garden designs and glasshouses. The project will be managed by Bancroft Construction Company, based in Wilmington, DE.   In keeping with Longwood’s tradition of blending fountain gardens and horticultural display, the centerpiece and largest single element of Longwood Reimagined is the creation of a new 32,000-square-foot glasshouse, designed by WEISS/MANFREDI, with gardens and pools designed by Reed Hilderbrand. This new West Conservatory with its asymmetrical, crystalline peaks seems to float on a pool of water, while the garden inside, inspired by the wild and cultivated landscapes of the Mediterranean, is conceived as seasonally changing islands set amid pools, canals, and low fountains. In the tapestry-like garden design, iconic plants of this ecology such ...