Gardens: Main Fountain Garden District

How to Grow Early Spring Vegetables
If timed carefully, the vegetable gardener can reap the rewards of frost-tolerant spring vegetables—peas, broccoli, kale, arugula, cabbage, spinach, carrots, radishes, scallions, cilantro, and lettuce, to name a few.

Growing for Good
This growing season, Longwood joined the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society in their new program, Harvest 2020. An initiative designed to help address the 11 percent of households in the Greater Philadelphia region that are food insecure and unable to access healthy, fresh food on a daily basis.

The Art of Heart
We are so pleased to welcome a new addition to our Idea Garden—an intricately detailed, beautifully realistic life-sized bronze sculpture by celebrated Brandywine Valley artist André Harvey (1941–2018).

Midsummer is for Sowing
This month, don’t forget about fall crops, or you will miss out on a bounty of greens, root vegetables, squashes, and more—many of which are of higher quality in cool fall weather and can store through the winter.

Our Evolving Rose Garden
When you return to visit us again, we hope you’ll make the Rose Garden one of your first stops … there is something new to see!

Getting Started with Vegetable Gardening
With more time at home this spring, there has never been a better time to start that home vegetable garden you’ve always wanted.

Calculating Beauty: Our Main Fountain Garden Lindens
Our trees—including the 168 linden trees in our Main Fountain Garden’s south, east, and west allées —are among the most exceptional parts of Longwood’s past, present, and future.

Waking the Giant
Preparing the Main Fountain Garden for its annual awakening is a multi-faceted process of plumbing and electrical ingenuity that begins months before the fountains start to dance.

Making Our Fountains Dance
Our imaginative fountain choreographers utilize cutting-edge technology and artistic finesse to create astonishing performances.

Maintaining Tradition: A Boxwood Story
The pinnacle of Pierre S. du Pont’s love for gardening is set to reopen next summer to the delight of thousands of eager guests. Meticulous planning went into the revitalization of the Main Fountain Garden, with much consideration given to preserving the legacy of Mr. du Pont and the property he purchased in 1906. In addition to saving the arboretum that the Peirce brothers started in 1798, Pierre became the steward of a large collection of boxwood that was planted among the trees leading to the Peirce home.

No Stone Un-Conserved
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.