With the debut of our new summer cocktail menu and the recent honor of a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, now is the perfect moment to share a behind-the-scenes look at all that goes into crafting our seasonal drink selections … and what to sip this summer.

Read along for how, now five years after first detecting boxwood blight in our Gardens, we inspect for and protect against this disease.

Now available in The Garden Shop are joyful bouquets sourced straight from Idea Garden horticulturists and designed into bouquets by the creative minds at The Garden Shop, just steps away.

What is your favorite tree? It’s a time-honored question that will evoke answers from even the most taciturn individual.

Read on to gather some tailored, top-notch picks from a variety of Longwood staff for your summer reading list—or your year-round to-be-read list.

The five-acre Main Fountain Garden is home to three allées totaling 164 littleleaf linden trees. All that goes into maintaining and pruning these trees may surprise you … and now, with a new addition to the process, it’s more precise than ever.

Here, our Fellows reflect on all the discoveries and memories made during their placements around the world.

Central to the story of making our fountains dance is Longwood’s P.S. du Pont Fellow and very first fountain choreographer Colvin Randall, who has been designing fountain performances for an incredible 45 years.

Our newly enhanced Waterlily Court is an aquatic showcase like no other—and it’s making its much-anticipated debut on May 9, marking the completion of Longwood Reimagined.

Want to learn how you could incorporate the best natives into your home garden or landscape? Read on for how to do so and where you can view native species here at Longwood.

Longwood’s Volunteer Program began in 1989 when our very first volunteer, Hugo Taraboletti, shared his expertise in orchid cultivation with our horticulture staff. What began as a single volunteer’s contribution has blossomed into a thriving team of 575 passionate individuals who share their time and talents to support Longwood’s mission and vision for the future.

Bonsai was not generally known in the western world outside of Asia until the early twentieth century, but the Longwood Gardens Library recently acquired a nearly 300-year-old rare book that perhaps challenges that notion, offers an interesting connection to one of our bonsai collection’s four original trees, and adds to the intrigue of this amazing art form.

I had the extraordinary experience of walking the Gardens as they come alive at evening … here I share with you all I saw—and photographed—and all there is for you to see during our spring evenings.

Considering the vastness of our collection, our operations, and our acreage, it might be surprising to learn that a dedicated team of just three full-time woody nursery horticulturists manages our seven-acre woody nursery, supporting all our seasonal and permanent woody plants.

Adjacent to the new Bonsai Courtyard, this three-story building houses horticulture staff workspaces, boiler operations, and, now, our Bonsai Workshop. Follow along we take a behind-the-scenes look at this storied space and its integral role at Longwood.

If you’ve ever paused between the Orangery and Exhibition Hall in our Main Conservatory, you may have noticed two impressive bronze plaques. These

Starting this season, we have replaced the East Conservatory’s lawn along the Oval Basin with a permanent collection of vibrant, tropical plantings designed to pull guests into the story and narrative of the garden

By working with nature and never against it—and to adapt to the needs of its Mediterranean-inspired plant palette—we built our West Conservatory with energy-efficiency and sustainability at top of mind.

This year, we’re able to learn more about conservatories through our Community Read 2025 selection, Paradise Under Glass: The Education of an Indoor Gardener by Ruth Kassinger, which expertly weaves her unplanned adventure of building her own conservatory at her suburban Maryland home with learning the basics of gardening, exploring the history of conservatories, and navigating personal grief and loss.

. It’s our very first winter with the new West Conservatory, meaning it’s your very first chance to witness this architectural showstopper begin its peak flowering season.