Highlights from Our Gardens Every Place Tells a Story (1) Our stories are strong and far-reaching. They touch the land upon which our story began, inspire our vision, and forever connect us with our community. This year, our longstanding roots give rise to spectacular things as we honor our sense of place, where every landscape in our Gardens tells a story. This spring we invite you to discover our new Story Sites. From learning how Longwood transitioned from a private estate to a public garden; to discovering the story beneath your feet on our Flower Garden Walk; to understanding the engineering marvels and novelties that make the Peirce-du Pont House unique, there are so many stories to enlighten, inform, and inspire. Enhance your experience by trying our new Garden Story Tour where our expert guides lead you through the highlights of select Gardens and share fascinating stories about our history along the way.
The First Signs of Spring (2) Our spring display began last fall, when teams of gardeners armed with bulb planters ventured outdoors to Oak Knoll and the lawns surrounding the Peirce-du Pont House to plant 50,000 additional geophytes to our impressive display featuring two million. These early blooming bulbs with their purple, yellow and white flowers are among the first harbingers of spring. The season unfolds with the yellow winter-aconite and lavender crocus in late winter, followed by the blues of squill and glory-of-the-snow in the earliest days of spring. The technique we use of planting informal patterns that mimic the bloom in the wild is called naturalizing. As the plants grow each
year, they increase through selfseeding and bulb division. You can naturalize bulbs on a smaller scale in your own yard, too. Our gardeners suggest choosing hardy, long-lived small bulbs for your lawn, such as squill or winter-aconite, which self-seed. Do not mow the bulb foliage and surrounding grass for approximately six weeks after bloom, so that their leaves can make food for next year’s display. With proper bulb selection and maintenance, your display should increase year after year.
A Sequoia in the Gardens (3) A story that stretches back thousands of years will be on view outside the Peirce-du Pont House from April 5 to May 11. A giant sequoia tree round (Sequoiadendron giganteum), measuring nine feet across and weighing about 1,500 pounds, has quite a history. In a letter in 1928, Mr. du Pont said he wished to acquire a section of a sequoia or redwood tree round because “few of our Eastern people have opportunity to visit the coast.” Mr. du Pont purchased the sequoia tree round from Sequoia National Park in CA where the tree had blown over in 1916. At that time, the tree was estimated to be 2,100 years old. Make sure to note the important dates in history marked on the rings of this impressive specimen.