For a librarian, managing images at Longwood Gardens is in the “dream job” category. Images are an essential tool for telling the Longwood story and sharing Longwood with the world. From beauty shots of seasonal displays to documentation of plumbers calibrating fountains to yearly Waterlily Display preparation, there is always something to photograph at Longwood. As Longwood’s digital resource manager, keeping up with the “fire hose” of images and delivering just the right images when they are needed is an exciting challenge … and every day is different!

Our tuition-free Professional Horticulture Program is as unique—and inspirational—as its students. Combining practical experience, coursework, hands-on projects, and study abroad travel, the two-year immersive program prepares students of varied interests and ages—high schoolers to career changers—for careers in horticulture through fun, active learning.

Dig into this year’s Community Read books, and you’ll unearth things you never knew about seeds. In Thor Hanson’s The Triumph of Seeds, you’ll learn about a date seed that sprouted after lying dormant for nearly 2,000 years; cotton seeds that traveled more than 500 miles by wind and wave to gain new ground in the Galapagos Islands; and wild primates who “shop the apothecary of the rainforest” for the healing powers of plants … and seeds.

During visits to regional gardens for salon-style discussions, the Longwood Fellows are given the opportunity to learn firsthand from experts in the field of public horticulture. Hosted by Delaware’s Mt. Cuba Center, this latest salon provided the Fellows with insight on human resources leadership and management.

This year at Longwood Gardens, it’s all about seeds. Few people have explored these marvels of form and function as closely—and as broadly—as Thor Hanson, award-winning author of our 2019 Community Read selection, The Triumph of Seeds: How Grains, Nuts, Kernels, Pulses, & Pips Conquered the Plant Kingdom and Shaped Human History.

Chanticleer is a pleasure garden; its exuberant contemporary garden designs and architectural details created by skilled horticulturists and craftspeople delight the senses. During our recent Fellows salon, we learned that staff empowerment and engagement are the driving forces behind Chanticleer’s novel visitor experience.

The Fellows have enjoyed two salons in January; the first illustrating the importance of partnerships and the second focusing on the art of strategic planning.

The Longwood Fellows program is fortunate to be situated within the thriving cultural community of the Greater Philadelphia area. The aphorism “a rising tide lifts all boats” is an apt metaphor for the support network that exists for the thousands of cultural organizations in the region.

As Longwood received the first snow dusting of the season, the Fellows departed for Morris Arboretum for our third salon in a series held at culturally significant locations. For this salon, we focused on the concept of how creating financial endowments can provide consistency and reliability on an often bumpy financial road. In short—how to fund impressive new projects and pay the electric bills.

As Fellows, the Longwood Fellows Program helps us develop our leadership fluency and understanding of organizational management. As part of the program, we visit gardens with distinct missions that set them apart from others. Our most recent salon was hosted at Jenkins Arboretum & Gardens, which is nestled in the busy Main Line area of the Philadelphia metro region.

The Longwood Fellows Program curriculum includes salon-style discussions hosted by regional public garden and cultural arts leaders who have expertise in specific leadership-related areas. Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library was aptly selected to host the discussion of “How the Garden Fits into Institutional Mission.”

As nature is ever-evolving and multi-faceted, so is the operation of gardens themselves. As part of the Longwood Gardens Fellows Program, our Fellows spent two months at individual field placement sites across the globe to learn from thought leaders, as well as to share and grow their own expertise.

We are proud to welcome Hope Jahren to Longwood Gardens on March 24, 2018, for Celebrating Women in Science and Horticulture, and for A Community Conversation. Recently we had the opportunity to ask the author some questions about her life as a scientist, and about writing her national bestseller, Lab Girl.

Our 2018 Community Read, now in its fifth year, features three titles and a multitude of activities that celebrate female scientists: Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, Women in Science by Rachel Ignotofsky, and The Tree Lady by H. Joseph Hopkins. At Longwood, our dedicated staff, students, and volunteers—many of them women—work behind the scenes to bring you the beauty of our Gardens through the art and science of horticulture.

“It’s heaven,” exclaimed Natalie Kramer when the twinkling white and blue lights began to dance for the first time in our Topiary Garden. Kramer is one of four students who have been working since September assisting Longwood Staff members on the building and installation of the Gardens’ newest holiday light display.

Great public gardens must function as successful businesses to provide maximum impact and return on their mission. Leaders of nonprofit organizations focus on mission while also exercising fiscal discipline in order to meet their strategic objectives.

In the early 1800s, at the country’s first botanic garden, Ann Bartram Carr welcomed boaters by serving them ice cream. Today, neighborhood kids ride Bartram’s Garden kayaks out to a raft on the Schuylkill River where they, too, are greeted with free ice cream. Such is the spirit of welcome that we, the Longwood Fellows, were greeted with during our recent visit to Bartram’s Garden.

On July 27, the inaugural cohort of Longwood Fellows traveled to Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for the first in a series of Leadership Salons that will expose the Fellows to thought leaders in public horticulture and beyond and to the challenging topics they face in the nonprofit sector. This first salon, led by Danielle Rice, Ph.D., Director of Museum Leadership at Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, focused on the history of urban public spaces—an appropriate place to begin.

“Leadership” can be an amorphous term. Most agree that it is an important quality to possess these days, from scholars to the average person on the street, but how is the term defined and what does it mean to study leadership in 2017? Beginning with this post, the Longwood Gardens Fellows invite you to “Follow the Fellows” as they define the term for themselves and actively seek to develop their leadership skills and personal brands.

What does our 2017 Community Read selection, The Way Things Work Now, have in common with our Main Fountain Garden? Both are works of art and engineering that engage the imagination. Both were created by masters of their fields—David Macaulay is an award-winning author whose words and drawings help us imagine how technology works, while Pierre S. du Pont was a visionary business leader whose love of fountains placed that technology on spectacular display. It’s one thing to stand in awe of such technological wonders—and quite another thing to wonder, and to seek to understand. That’s what David Macaulay and this year’s Community Read do so well—they make us wonder not only about things that inspire awe, but also about things we might otherwise take for granted.