The Longwood Gardens Library & Archives recently received a generous gift from longtime guest, local historian, and avid travel photographer, Eugene L. DiOrio. Since May 2013, Mr. DiOrio has presented 1,073 black-and-white negatives, 11,652 color slides, and approximately 3 boxes of brochures, pamphlets, and maps to Longwood. The collection covers Gene’s local, regional, and European travels, with a focus on historic architecture, estates, and gardens; it will comprise approximately 40,000 black-and-white negatives and 40,000 color slides when complete.

When Pierre and Alice du Pont were married in October 1915, the Longwood estate already boasted beautiful outdoor flower gardens, the Open Air Theatre, and a brand new addition to the Peirce-du Pont House—a conservatory. Their passion for gardens was evident. Features that we associate with Longwood today, like dahlias, roses, topiaries, fountains, champion trees, and brilliant spring bulbs were already notable; however, there were no orchids.

The Longwood Graduate Program Fellows have nearly finished our time in Australia. We visited eleven different sites including botanic gardens, a national park, and a zoo. Each location has filled a different niche and given us a unique experience. Our goal for this trip was to learn how Australian gardens are evaluating the success and social impact of their site and programs. As an element of that goal we have also been investigating community engagement strategies. Evaluating social impact is a challenging task, in fact simply agreeing on definitions can be a challenge. Assessing social impact, or return on mission, is something we are currently working on as part of the next 5-year strategic plan here at Longwood Gardens.

As Pennsylvania finally seems to be settling into winter weather, the First Year Longwood Graduate Fellows are excited to be setting off for the southern hemisphere. Since July, we have been researching and developing an itinerary to explore the social impact of Australian gardens in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. This trip was designed to align with Longwood Gardens’ strategic planning goals to measure the effect of education and community engagement programs beyond the garden gates.

Tracing the legacy of camellias at Longwood, from Pierre S. du Pont’s passion to core collection.

A little boy dashes from the Visitor Center into the brightly quiet wonder of A Longwood Christmas. His eyes, wide as the night, reflect the glow of the big old elm, tall as the sky and brilliant with light, perhaps borrowed from the stars above. “How do they do all of this?” he exclaims. A December breeze catches the branches and makes the lights twinkle even more brightly. Or could it be the spirit of Christmas at Longwood—the unseen essence that animates the place and its people?

This Christmas, our Fern Passage provides a natural twist on our fountain-inspired theme. To accentuate the subtle beauty of this ancient plant family, we have installed some very unique igneous stone fountains. Robert Wertz is the artist and owner of Igneous Rock Gallery in Mechanicsburg, PA, and the creator of this special display. Robert obtains his stone from a small lava deposit in the remote Beaver Canyon, located in the Okanagan Highlands of Washington State. The stone of Beaver Canyon is a vibrantly-colored columnar andesite that formed as a result of a volcanic eruption some 45 million years ago. It is unique in the world, and though Robert occasionally works with other types of rock, the Beaver Canyon columns are his preferred artistic medium.

It was the age of flappers and jazz … but at Longwood Gardens it was more about industrial-strength classicism and illuminated fountains, thanks to the vision of Pierre S. du Pont. Mr. du Pont was in the technology business of chemistry and automobiles. He was building skyscrapers, chemical factories, and assembly lines, so it wasn’t hard to adapt technology to make fountains spurt and glow. Longwood’s first fountain (1907), on the Flower Garden Walk, was supplied by gravity from a tank in the Peirce-du Pont House attic, which in turn was fed from a hydraulic ram at the Large Lake. No electricity was required since the power to push water uphill came from the water itself...

During the past year, Longwood guests have had the opportunity to watch the revitalization of the Main Fountain Garden. The current view in front of the Conservatory may not appear to be an obvious source of aesthetic inspiration for other projects around the Gardens; however, Longwood’s Display Designer, Jim Sutton, has placed this massive project at the heart of the Gardens’ Christmas theme. This year, fountains and the essence of water inform every aspect of the Conservatory’s display as the Main Fountain Garden revitalization continues a short distance away.

A life lesson here in Japan is that beauty is, without a doubt, in the eye of the beholder. Learning about the Japanese perception of beauty in contrast to our own has been a fascinating study in aesthetic. The chrysanthemum has provided us with the perfect subject matter to view these differences and has given us a whole new perspective on our own Chrysanthemum Festival at Longwood Gardens.

Water—not only does it sustain us with the fruits of our gardens and fields, it elevates our lives with its elemental beauty. This dual nature of water is embodied in the Gardens and fountains of Longwood, where utility and wonder thrive side by side. Essential to life in the Gardens, water is also a wellspring of play and artistry that finds expression in our fountains, which are monuments both to nature and to human ingenuity. Such human ingenuity was a defining trait of Longwood’s founder, Pierre S. du Pont. And yet even the most imaginative ideas build upon the knowledge of what has come before. Pierre "collected" ideas for gardens and fountains during his many trips to Europe and to world's fairs, and then implemented them at Longwood, shaping them according to his own American vision and innovation. He also gained inspiration from the pages of his personal library, a tradition that continues today when staff, students, and volunteers step into the Longwood Gardens Library & Archives.

Something new happened in the Trial Garden this summer. For the first time, Longwood staff members from throughout the Gardens were given the opportunity to design their own plant combinations. Those who participated had to select three to eight plants from a list of over 160 plant species and cultivars. With 26 different combinations, our guests had the difficult task of choosing their favorite three garden beds. Look to see if your vote was one of the winning combinations!

The final installment of the Nightscape Artist & Friends Speaker Series took place last Friday with a new set of panelists. Navid Khonsari and Torfi Frans Olafsson shared stories about their professional backgrounds with Ricardo Rivera, the director of Nightscape and founding partner of Klip Collective. Khonsari is the Executive Producer of iNK Stories, an independent media studio that pushes the boundaries of storytelling through documentaries, film, and video games. Olafsson serves as the Creative Director of EVE Universe IP Development for CCP Games. Friday’s conversation continued the series’ analysis of human agency—or an individual’s power to act—and technology’s ability to enhance the immersive experience of an artwork.

Chocolatier Christopher Curtin, whose acclaimed Éclat chocolates are a Chester County treasure, was looking for a year-round source of freshly grown herbs. Longwood Gardens, whose horticulture expertise is widely known, was looking to garner deeper relationships with local master artisans. The result: a memorable fusion of chocolate and mint for all to enjoy. Since childhood, Curtin had been a fan of Longwood and believed that a collaboration would offer interesting possibilities. His love of experimenting with interesting herbs to create unexpected flavors and the idea of having fresh herbs year-round naturally drew him to think of Longwood. Longwood was well aware of the esteemed Curtin, who spent 14 years in Europe studying the classic chocolate and pastry crafts. His popular West Chester-based store is located just minutes from the Gardens.

Last Friday saw the third installment of Longwood’s Artist & Friends Speaker Series for Nightscape: A Light and Sound Experience by Klip Collective. Two new panelists joined Ricardo Rivera, founding member of Klip Collective and mastermind of Nightscape, but the group’s conversation about experience and storytelling picked up right where it left off in August. Yelena Rachitsky, Creative Producer of the Future of StoryTelling Summit, and Lance Weiler, Founding Member and Director of the Columbia University Digital Storytelling Lab, joined Rivera to discuss the intersection of human experience, technology, and narrative as it relates to Nightscape. The abstract nature of Nightscape is the common thread weaving through the Artist & Friends Speaker Series. If Rivera and his team are sure about one thing, it is that Nightscape challenges the certainty, absolutes, and rules that tend to govern our waking lives. Instead, imagination, wonder, and curiosity serve as the viewer’s best guides throughout the installations.

This summer, Longwood Gardens is doing something new with our Trial Garden. We have always put the voting power in the hands of our guests, asking them to cast a ballot for their favorite plants. But this year, our guests will vote for combinations of plants, judging a friendly competition among staff members over who created the most beautiful garden beds. Teams and individuals entered the competition this spring, creating 26 unique plots for your viewing pleasure. Each garden uses anywhere from three to eight plants that were selected from a list of over 160 species and cultivars—many of which are tried-and-true Longwood favorites, but some of which are new to Longwood. Some designers took creative inspiration from their favorite genera, while others played with varying color themes or were inspired by travels to distant lands.

What are the components of a grand fountain garden? Dazzling water effects powered by hydraulic calculations, an inspiring design, and a stunning landscape are all parts of an unforgettable scene. For Longwood Gardens’ Main Fountain Garden (along with many other gardens built in the European tradition), sculpture is key to the Garden’s character, lending a unique and intimate quality. Each hand-carved stone is one-of-a-kind and tells a story of both the designer’s aesthetic as well as the artisan’s hand. As our Fountain Revitalization Project progresses, our trusted partners at Dan Lepore & Sons are the stewards of these cherished objects—cataloging, cleaning, conserving, and repairing more than 4,000 individual artifacts that will all eventually be returned to the Garden. This monumental task, like so many other components of the Fountain Revitalization, combines traditional craftsmanship with the latest advances in conservation and project management.

Last Friday, Longwood Gardens hosted the second installment of the Artist & Friends Speaker Series for Nightscape: A Light and Sound Experience by Klip Collective. Ricardo Rivera, creator of Nightscape and founding partner of Klip Collective, returned to participate with Josh Goldblum (Founder and CEO of Bluecadet) and Nick Fortugno (Co-Founder and COO of Playmatics). The discussion centered on the role of technology in Nightscape, especially regarding its power to add depth to the viewer’s experience. The panelists debated the concept of “experience” and its relevance to cultural institutions. How do we draw the line between engaging with something personally—such as physically walking through and taking in the Nightscape installations—and viewing images of it on a screen or hearing about it second-hand? Both are experiences … but how does one create something that’s deeply affective rather than passive or even derivative?

There is a scene in Akira Kurosawa's Dreams that has tugged at me for years, where a little boy escapes into the woods and sees a parade of foxes. He chances upon it and is not supposed to see it. It is a magical moment of uncertainty and amazement. I wanted to create that kind of feeling with Nightscape: A Light and Sound Experience by Klip Collective. For Klip Collective, the future of art is creating experience as art. We want to create a body of work where the audience has to move through it physically. Years ago, Klip Collective created a one-hundred-foot wide veil of smoke in a meadow where we projected fireflies that danced in frantic flight. It was designed to be viewed from a distance and seen in a larger context. To our surprise, people walked right into it. The audience wanted to be surrounded and lost in the chaos of the moment. Seeing how people were drawn to the lights and how they reacted to the experience inspired me to explore the idea of experience as art … and that began the process for Nightscape.

While visiting the Villa d'Este in 1913, Pierre S. du Pont, the founder of Longwood Gardens, announced, “It would be nice to have something like this at home.” This was a sentiment shared by other wealthy Americans visiting Europe around the same time. American residential landscape design in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—now known as the "Country Place Era"—was driven by these educated and well-traveled individuals who had the desire and means to build elaborate European-style estates at home. Mr. du Pont was developing Longwood Gardens not long after George Washington Vanderbilt II established the sprawling Biltmore Estate; at the same time, William Bowers Bourn II was constructing his country house, Filoli, and John D. Rockefeller was building this hilltop palace, Kykuit.