Peirce’s Woods

A stone gazebo sits beside a small lake tucked into a forest of bright green trees
District
House & Theater District
Style
Cultivated, Ephemeral, Serene
Best Seasons to Visit
Spring, Summer, Autumn
Scale
6 Acres

Enter the cool beauty of Peirce’s Woods, where you’ll notice a softening of sound, light, and color. Mighty oaks, ashes, maples, and tulip-trees tower above an award-winning garden, designed by W. Gary Smith, which focuses solely on native plants. Collection highlights include 200 species and cultivars of small trees, shrubs, and groundcovers, offering seasonal interest from spring through fall.

About This Garden

The central design theme is large horizontal sweeps of groundcovers, which balance the strong vertical lines of the mature tree trunks. Early spring is a magical time, when most of the woodland flowers are in bloom, including white foam-flowers (Tiarella), ‘Sherwood Purple’ creeping phlox (Phlox stolonifera), and dwarf-crested iris (Iris cristata). Fragrance plays a role in this garden as well, including the claret-hued blooms of the Carolina allspice shrub (Calycanthus floridus) and many of the azaleas, for which this garden is known. In the fall, we like to think that Peirce’s Woods hosts a second spring, when goldenrods and asters bloom in time with the changing leaves. 

Peirce’s Woods continues to evolve under the leadership of our horticulturists, with meticulous maintenance of the existing displays as well as clever design shifts to account for the ever-growing canopy of our storied trees.

Woodland Wonders

Discover the evolution of the seasons in this highly designed landscape, exclusively featuring native plants, shrubs, and trees. 

Green grasses in the foreground sit in front of blooming spring trees

Springtime in Peirce’s Woods is spectacular. April welcomes thousands of spring ephemerals that cover the forest floor with clear-hued, optimistic colors.

Green leafy plant on the ground surrounded by ferns

The mottled leaves and fragrant yellow blooms of Trillium luteum offer a sunny greeting to those who wander these woods during the months of spring. Though it takes seven-to-ten years for these plants to reach flowering size, the bloom lasts for weeks!

Small white flowers surrounded by green leaves cover the ground under a tree

Lasting only a few precious weeks in April, the wind-pollinated rue-anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides) blankets the forest floor. It’s one of Longwood’s first ephemerals, and it’s not to be missed.

A wooden bench sits on a brick pathway with planters of dark red plants under a blooming pink tree

The clear tones of the Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) command attention in the Entry Plaza, providing a teaser for the woodland beauty that awaits wandering guests.

a pathway through a lush green forest with purple flowers spread on the ground

April showers bring … a May tapestry of Phlox stolonifera ‘Sherwood Purple’ and its artful sweep of horizontal color in Peirce’s Woods.

two clusters of pale yellow pendulous flowers with long, curved sepals

Azaleas are a prominent feature of W. Gary Smith’s design of this seven-acre woodland landscape. Rhododendron atlanticum 'Yellow Delight', commonly called coast azalea, features clusters of fragrant blooms in April and May.

medium sized shrub covered in bright orange blooms, surrounded by green ferns

Florida flame azalea (Rhododendron austrinum) showers the garden with fireworks of vermillion-tinged petals,offset by a backdrop of lush ferns near Large Lake.

A stone gazebo sits beside a small lake tucked into a forest of bright green trees

Tucked into the western banks of Large Lake and ensconced in the greenery of June, Love Temple has witnessed countless loving embraces and betrothals.

a cluster of bright salmon-colored blooms with long sepals sitting atop green leaves

Rare in the wild, the plum-leaved azalea (Rhododendron prunifolium) is a late-blooming species, unfurling deep-crimson blooms in July and August offering an unexpected burst of color.

Waves of tall yellow grasses arch over green bushes

Come September, the sunny edges of Peirce’s Woods light up with colorful blooms from goldenrod (Solidago rugosa 'Fireworks') to native asters (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium 'October Skies').

A wooden pathway winds through woods with tress on the left and garden beds of yellow and red plants

A raised pathway winds through South Wood’s Edge, a room in Peirce’s Woods that enjoys plentiful moisture and southern sun exposure—amplifying one’s senses with fragrance, sound, and year-round color.

A bunch of small black-eyed Susan flowers sit among tall brown grasses in front of a forest

Rudbeckia fulgida bestows hundreds of brilliant blooms from summer through fall, brightening the flaxen-hued tufted hair grass (Deschampsia cespitosa) in the Cathedral Clearing in September.

Tall trees in full fall color, with orange and yellow leaves, line a paved walkway

The spectacular colors of fall are worth the wait every year, particularly in the Cathedral Clearing where hickories and tulip-trees put on a show that’s not to be missed.

A line of tall snowy trees covered in white snow

Along the path of South Wood’s Edge, an impressive grove of Taxodium distichum var. imbricarium ‘Prairie Sentinel’, or pond-cypress, reaches toward the sky in the freshly fallen snow.

A cleared road path goes through a snowy landscape of snow-covered trees and ground

Serenity now—and forever—in South Wood’s Edge, where the citron stems of the Cornus sericea 'Flaviramea' beckons, flanked by sour gum trees (Nyssa sylvatica) and flowering dogwood (Cornus florida).

A Bit Of History

Peirce’s Woods, as we know it today, was carved out of a larger area once known as Peirce’s Park. The woods were then gradually designed and planted throughout the 1990s. The landscape and paths, however, were established in the late 1700s when the brothers Peirce began planting and managing their well-respected (and nationally recognized) arboretum. The handsome trees and the allure of their history inspired founder Pierre S. du Pont (1870-1954) to purchase the land that we now call Longwood Gardens. 

Extending to the east from the Peirce-du Pont House, simple paths wove through the canopy and down the slope to the lakes, allowing for public enjoyment of the landscape during the Victorian era. As ownership changed hands, the arboretum and the public garden fell into decline, providing Pierre with a sizable restoration project. However, this forested section was not significantly changed as he developed Longwood. 

In the late 1950s, an ornamental understory was added to the wooded areas, with much of the planting focused on the addition of a prolific layer of rhododendrons and azaleas. In the early 1990s, famed landscape architect Sir Peter Shepheard designed new paths for improved accessibility and circulation.

Two men stand looking over a map laid out on a table
Tres Fromme, Planning and Design Specialist and W. Gary Smith, landscape architect

In 1993, landscape architect W. Gary Smith was hired to help reimagine the experience within the woods. His vision was to design a large-scale work that showcased the inherent beauty of plants native to the middle Atlantic region of the United States, the first design of its kind at Longwood or at any public garden at the time. Thousands of shrubs, groundcovers, and flowering understory trees were added en masse in deliberate patterns of texture, color, and form, transforming what was once just a forested path to the Italian Water Garden into a new destination for our visitors. 

In 1996, the Longwood team embarked upon an exciting journey to the mountains just east of the North Carolina-Tennessee border. The goal was to save a collection of native plants from an impending interstate highway project. In total, the team returned with thousands of specimens that were added to the existing beauty of the native woodland display garden of Peirce’s Woods.

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