Longwood Gardens: The New Meadow Garden
Nursery News: Carolyn’s Shade Gardens is a retail nursery located in Bryn Mawr, PA, specializing in showy, colorful, and unusual plants for shade. The only plants that we ship are snowdrops and miniature hostas. For catalogues and announcements of events, please send your full name, location, and phone number (for back up use only) to carolyn@carolynsshadegardens.com. Click here to get to the home page of our website for catalogues and information about our nursery and to subscribe to our blog.
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The entrance garden outside the visitor’s center at Longwood is lush and tropical right now.
Michael and I are members of Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, US, and visit on a regular basis. We have been excitedly awaiting the opening of Longwood’s new meadow garden. We visited the meadow this week and were very impressed.
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A longer view of the entrance.
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Another pretty entrance to the rose arbor.
The scope of the project is immense. The garden is 86 acres filled with native plants appropriate to a meadow habitat. There are three miles of walking trails through the meadow and its environs. What Longwood has created in this meadow through ecological management of the property for native plants and animals is breathtaking and magical. I highly recommend a visit right now because the meadow is at its peak. However, for those of you who aren’t local, a virtual tour follows. Keep in mind that photos cannot truly convey the amazing diversity and breadth of this project.
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A patch of Joe Pye weed in a sea of goldenrod, sunflowers, and other native plants.
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Native grasses in the meadow area in front of Longwood’s scenic barn complex.
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The newly restored Webb farmhouse, built in the 16th century by one of the original landowners, houses a very informative exhibit on the history of the area and the evolution of the meadow through the seasons.
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Three miles of trails circle and crisscross the meadow.
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The native sunflowers really stand out.
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Bands of color through the meadow are created by swathes of different plants.
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Some areas are still filling in so the meadow will look even better next year.
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Longwood’s bluebird box program is over 30 years old and fledges an average of 170 bluebirds a year.
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Over 1,100 native trees and shrubs have been added to the woodland edges bordering the meadow.
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The pictures make the beauty look subtle, but it’s not. The sensation of walking through the meadow with the sun shining, the bees buzzing, the butterflies nectaring, the birds collecting seeds, and the grasses swaying in the breeze cannot be captured in a photo. If you can visit Longwood, try to do it now so you can share our magical experience.
I will leave you with the following quotation, for me the answer to the ending question is a resounding yes:
Travis Beck, Director of Horticulture Mt. Cuba Center
Carolyn
P.S. I am excited to report that the stat counter for Carolyn’s Shade Gardens blog has now recorded over 1,000,000 views. Thank you to all my readers all over the world!
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CAROLYN'S SHADE GARDENS 
September 5, 2014 at 9:35 pm
Congratulations on your viewership! I always enjoy my visits here. 🙂 That meadow looks great, and it’s so encouraging that more organizations and people are restoring and planting prairies and meadows. It was almost too late–many of the plants are now endangered or threatened. Whenever I see photos of Pennsylvania (and when we drove through, as well), it strikes me how similar the landscape is to Wisconsin.
September 6, 2014 at 6:56 pm
Beth, PA is so much hotter than WI that I can’t believe that they are similar, but I have never been to Wisconsin. My husband went there many times in his childhood and has fond memories. Carolyn
September 6, 2014 at 9:04 am
Just Gorgeous!! I ❤ prairies and meadow gardens. We have so few of them left in the natural world; it's great to see that they're getting replanted and gaining their place along more formally structured gardens. I'm not local, but the pictures are lovely and great inspiration.
September 6, 2014 at 6:54 pm
Kyle, So glad you enjoyed the photo tour. I always feel it is so inadequate compared to the real thing so you made me feel better about. It is very sad that meadows are becoming so rare. They are so much more beautiful than designed gardens. Carolyn
September 6, 2014 at 1:06 pm
The entrance plantings look summertime perfect, I wonder if the yellow plant is cassia, it sure looks better than the small undernourished plants I grew last year!
Is the change in the meadow the increasingly diversified plantings or is there another big change? I always loved the wide open fields and remember being amazed by how it all sparkled one night from the many fireflies. It’s harder and harder to find anything so wide and open on the east coast these days.
September 6, 2014 at 6:53 pm
Frank, They have opened up a lot more of the meadow area, planted probably tens of thousands more meadow plants, and removed a lot of non-natives although some remain. The yellow plant in the first photo is a type of Senna, candelabra plant. Carolyn
September 7, 2014 at 8:24 am
What a daunting task!
Ahhhh, Senna is what I grew, and seeing it again makes me want it even more for those awesome leaves and blooms 🙂
September 7, 2014 at 1:21 pm
I grow a Senna that I think is native but doesn’t seem to have showy flowers like the one in the photo. Longwood’s is Senna didymobotrya so you should try that one.
September 7, 2014 at 4:20 am
Hello Carolyn,
Great to see that meadow habitat is being valued and restored on such a scale in the States as well. Very late in the day, but as here, better late than never. Would this type of habitat ever have been managed as ‘farmland’ ? And I wonder how it will be managed now? Grazing, cutting, or left as is? I’m guessing some management will be needed to keep trees from returning?
I’ve just finished a wonderfully written book called ‘Meadowland’ by John Lewis-Stempel, following the year in a small English Meadow, with wonderful observations and prose. As you say, still photos alone can’t capture the magic of these vibrant living ecosystems. You need to be there, and experience them, but well done for alerting folk to this venture.
To quote from John Lewis-Stempel’s closing page, which I’m sure he won’t mind(?)…
” This is the field I cut by hand, the field I was part of, where I learned the pleasure of simple things. If you want to know what happiness is, ask the fellow who cut the hay.”
I agree with his thoughts..
Best wishes
Julian
September 7, 2014 at 5:21 pm
Julian, thanks for the wonderful quote. I am sure I would like that book if I can find a copy. If I had to use one word to describe Longwood’s meadow, it would peaceful. There was a feeling as we walked around that everything was in its place, hard to describe, better to experience it yourself. Carolyn
September 7, 2014 at 4:35 pm
It’s wonderful that meadows are being restored in different parts of the world, I think that at last people are realising what we have swept away in the past and decided that it isn’t too late to repair the damage. I love seeing flowers en masse like that and I’m sure the bees and butterflies do too!
September 7, 2014 at 5:17 pm
Pauline, There are a lot of meadows in the northeastern part of the US, but unfortunately they are being overtaken by non-native invasive plants. The meadow at Longwood has oriental bittersweet in many areas. Longwood is managing it to keep it under control but not attempting to eliminate it. Carolyn
September 7, 2014 at 9:44 pm
We are visiting Longwood Gardens next weekend. Can’t wait to see the meadow in person, although you did a pretty good job with your virtual tour. P. x
September 8, 2014 at 9:27 am
Pam, How fun! You will really enjoy it. Wear comfortable walking shoes. Carolyn
September 20, 2014 at 7:41 pm
Had a fabulous day — spent 7 hours at Longwood. The meadow garden exceeded expectations. You are right that it had to be experienced to be fully appreciated. I’m not sure I can do as good a posting about it as yours though. P. x
September 8, 2014 at 10:16 am
Carolyn,
Did you learn if Longwoods’ recent meadow planting installations were restricted to truly local natives only, or did they define “native” to a broader US Mid-Atlantic region?
[PS – Good to see you on Saturday’s garden tour]
September 8, 2014 at 12:33 pm
Eric, Nice to see you too. I did not read anything that addressed this issue. It would be interesting to know Longwood’s approach to the definition of native. However, I think that the focus on local natives versus regional natives or cultivars of natives gets in the way of inspiring gardeners to plant any natives at all. I want people to plant natives whether they are native to Delaware County or the mid-Atlantic. Either one is a lot more native than Asia. Carolyn
September 8, 2014 at 8:29 pm
Flowers in a meadow are wonderful, but even more wonderful are all the forms of wildlife that benefit from such an area. Thank you for your photos and descriptions.
September 8, 2014 at 9:52 pm
Deb, I wish you could see it in person, amazing. Carolyn
September 11, 2014 at 4:54 am
This is why I grow a meadow…smaller but none the less beautiful with similar plants and it is ablaze every morning now with the sunrise hitting the goldenrod just right.
September 12, 2014 at 9:53 am
Donna, Your meadow must be quite beautiful. I have a small one too which is in full bloom now. Carolyn
September 13, 2014 at 1:20 pm
Living near the Tallgrass Prairie I completely understand.
September 13, 2014 at 3:46 pm
Greg, You are very lucky to be able to experience that type of prairie. Carolyn
September 19, 2014 at 9:56 am
Carolyn, I know, too often I use the terms, amazing, fantastic,fabulous, I think I may even have said awesome, can you believe. I don’t say wow though, Longwood, flipping, wow, wow, wow. Oh, and what is that (magnificent) plant in the first picture with leaves like Fern and yellow/brown flower spikes.
September 19, 2014 at 1:52 pm
Alistair, So glad you like the meadow, it is amazing. I may have to go visit again soon. The plant in the first picture is Senna didymobotrya, candalabra-tree. It is native throughout Africa and probably not hardy where you and I live. Wikipedia used the dreaded word “naturalized” in Hawaii, California, and Florida so readers there and near there should probably avoid it. Carolyn
September 20, 2014 at 3:56 am
Thanks, it is a real show stopper.
September 25, 2014 at 8:00 pm
I had to suffice with just a peak last summer. I can’t wait to see it finished. Will you be attending the Perennial Plant Conf. at Swarthmore?
September 26, 2014 at 7:06 pm
Les, Well worth the trip even from where you are. Sent you an email about the PPC. Carolyn