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TRIP TO EAST COAST HIGHLIGHTED BY HISTORIC GARDEN TOURS
When I travel for business or pleasure nowadays, I always have my antennae up for nearby gardens. On a recent trip to the East Coast, I visited several gardens that were well worth the time and expense.
Longwood Gardens at Kennett Square, Pennsylvania (30 miles west of Philadelphia) is worth a visit even if this is your only destination. Longwood Gardens describes itself as "the world's premiere horticultural display...a celebration of horticulture, architecture, music and theater." That's an ambitious moniker to live up to, but I'll be the first to admit that this is an impressive display.
Longwood's history dates from 1700 when the property was sold to the Peirce family by fellow Quaker William Penn. In 1798, brothers Samuel and Joshua Peirce began collecting and planting trees in a small arboretum that became known as Peirce's Park. Pierre du Pont (recognize that name?) bought the property in 1906 to save the trees because they were about to be cut for lumber.
Pierre S. du Pont, chairman of the DuPont and General Motors companies, was Longwood's owner and architect. As he developed the property, he continued the Peirce tradition of welcoming the public to share its beauty. After his death, he left the Gardens "for the sole use of the public for purposes of exhibition, instruction, education and enjoyment."
Today, Longwood Gardens, Inc. is a private not-for-profit organization with 54 gardeners and hundreds of volunteers who tend to the Garden's 1,050 acres.
A highlight of my visit to Longwood was a walking tour of the garden's heritage trees - some of the oldest and most majestic in the country. Many of these trees have reached heights of more than 100 feet. The collection includes many specimen trees familiar to Minnesotans, such as Ohio Buckeye, sugar maple and little leaf linden, as well as numerous trees that we don't see growing in this part of the U.S.
The unusual bark of the London plane tree (Platanus x acerifolia) caught my eye. Plane trees tower to heights of more than 100 feet and catch the eye because of their exfoliating bark. As the plane tree sheds foot-long sections of bark, the trunk takes on a colorful, a blotchy appearance of olive green, brown, cream and other color tones.
Longwood also has a cluster of four very old weeping hemlocks that have grown together to form one large cascading mound of foliage that is more than 75 feet in diameter. As I crawled inside this cavernous hideaway, the worn footpaths and pop caps evinced that other tree lovers had found their way inside over the decades, too. I'd love to have a similar mound in my yard but I don't think I can wait the 75 or 100 years it would take for the hemlocks to attain the shape of Longwood's planting.
My wife and I also visited Hampton Gardens on the north side of Baltimore. Hampton Gardens is a national historic site and includes a mansion built in the 1700s by Captain Charles Ridgely. His nephew, Charles Carnan Ridgely, governor of Maryland from 1815-1818, inherited the property in 1790 and set out to make the mansion and grounds a showplace.
In 1799, Charles Carnan Ridgely had 10,590 feet of wooden irrigation pipe laid to convey water from nearby springs to the mansion, gardens and meadows. By 1880, the gardens boasted over 20,000 bedding plants and 4,000 roses in more than 275 beds. By 1859, irrigation water was conducted from a spring by 2,000 feet of lead pipe to a reservoir at the mansion. From there, the system radiated to hydrants placed throughout the gardens.
Hampton Gardens has an impressive collection of mature native and exotic trees, several of which date to the early 1800s. One of the largest Cedars of Lebanon in the U.S. is located here, believed to have been transported in the early 1800s from the Middle East in a shoebox. Three gnarled catalpa trees of the same vintage are still standing.
The largest Saucer Magnolia tree in Maryland was said to be an innovative hybrid when planted in the 1820s, and the tallest tree on the property, at 115 feet, is a pecan tree.
A trip to the East Coast makes one realize how much more recorded history exists there than in the Midwest. As I stood outside Paul Revere's house in Boston, where Paul raised 16 children, I couldn't help think how Americans were busy working and playing and planting gardens on this street more than 100 years prior to the first settlers taking up residence in Minnesota.
My gardening advice, as a result of this trip, is to check out and visit the many wonderful gardens that exist in the places you travel to in the years ahead.
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PUTTING DOWN ROOTS:
A Delightful Blend of
Gardening Wisdom, Wit
and Whimsy
$10 + $2 for shipping
by Cliff Johnson |
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