Longwood Chimes Issue 303 by Longwood Gardens

LONGWOOD CHIMES 303

Summer 2021

No. 303

Reimagination is where vision meets change. As we embark on our largest garden transformation in a century with Longwood Reimagined, we reﬂect on how many other aspects of our Gardens we have reimagined. Our talented horticulturists adapt to mother nature’s whims on an almost daily basis, we’ve seen how unexpected circumstances have required us to rethink how we connect, educate, and entertain our guests, and we share how Mr. du Pont re-envisioned the initial designs— and designers—of his grand Conservatory.

In Brief

Best Laid Plants Our Conservatory display design team pivots, adapts, and gets creative to meet ever-changing challenges. By James Sutton

From Hands-on to Online: Learning Reimagined Our online learning opportunities evolve, engage, and connect during a challenging time. By Lynn Schuessler

Going the Distance Caring for our aquatic collection during Longwood Reimagined calls for far-reaching collaboration. By Katie Mobley

When Borders Are Closed Evolving and adapting our plant exploration efforts during a global pandemic requires a new approach. By Peter Zale

Features

On the Move Everything from books and bonsai to people and palms are on the move as we embark on Longwood Reimagined.

Thinking in Ecosystem Time The role technology plays in advancing science-based adaptive land management continues to grow. By Lea Johnson and Kristie Lane Anderson

A Winning Solution Pierre du Pont and his carousel of architects and engineers scored a big win exactly 100 years ago with the construction of the steel, concrete, bronze, and glass Conservatory. By Colvin Randall

In Brief

Rolled drawings detailing plans for the Conservatory Lower Reception Suite await in the Potting Shed. This phase of the project is scheduled to begin in November 2021. Photo by Hank Davis.

Horticulture

Best Laid Plants Our Conservatory display design team pivots, adapts, and gets creative in order to meet ever-changing challenges. By James Sutton

Designing any garden is always filled with exciting challenges for a self-confessed plant lover … and those challenges especially arise when plants don’t behave exactly as planned. Anyone who has ever sat and pondered what a beautiful garden should look like has gotten lost in the vision of plants performing exactly as pictured in the catalogs, which often showcase photographs of perfectly groomed plants at their peak in their ideal environment. But what happens when that vision of plants is not the reality? We pivot, adapt, and get creative. At Longwood Gardens, we are challenged with the requirement that the Conservatory look like a flower show every day of the year, and our display team begins to plan each seasonal display one full year in advance to meet that challenge. We want to deliver the most colorful display and we want to present horticultural perfection. It all begins with a plan, carefully crafted after many long hours and some impassioned discussions about favorite plants, trusted stalwarts, new introductions, and guest expectations.

Pencil goes to paper and the process begins, catalogs at the ready. It sounds like a well-honed machine and it would be a perfect process if only the plants could read and follow our carefully laid-out plan! When complete, the display design plan is handed off to the production team. This very skilled group of dedicated professionals strives to deliver all expectations every week for a very discerning audience. The production team uses the display design plan to create the crop schedule, which is a formidable, complicated document that lists every plant to be grown for the entire year, along with the number and size of pots needed, planned display location, projected display date, height and width, responsible grower’s name, and grow location … along with many notes to ensure success. Sometimes, however, nature has other plans. Each week the display design team meets to review crop availability, and reality comes into play. The crop availability document lists exactly what is available and its stage of development. Here is where flexibility and

Misfit poinsettias of an incorrect color and cultivar shine on display in the Banana House during A Longwood Christmas. Photo by Larry Albee.

creativity become your two best friends. Some challenges the team knows about well in advance, such as unavailability of ordered crops, wrong color discovered upon arrival, or the loss of a crop grown in-house. Other times, we deal with much larger, unexpected challenges. One A Longwood Christmas season we were surprised to find that hundreds of beautiful poinsettia plants we had ordered in a specific cultivar and color turned out to be a different cultivar than what we had ordered … and the cultivar’s hue strongly clashed with the color of the marble on the Fern Floor. We had to make an immediate decision on how to pivot and still complete our installation in time for the season to open. The offending plants could not be returned, so we ordered a shipment of white poinsettias, which we knew would be available on the market. The misfit cultivar plants made a lovely impromptu display under the banana trees in the Banana House and, at the end of the day, no one was the wiser.

Surplus plants created a brand new “garden path” experience on our Exhibition Hall stage during the 2021 Winter Wonder season. Photo by Becca Mathias.

While we must often deal with challenges, we just as often find ourselves happily facing the brighter side of unexpected opportunities. One such opportunity occurs when plants have grown either taller or wider than expected—which puts wrinkles in our detailed plan. Think of the Conservatory planting beds as puzzle pieces: once one piece is moved it affects the next piece, and those effects can easily multiply during a season—thereby rendering the display design plan as nothing more than a loose guideline. What we do with those puzzle pieces, however, is where the magic of Longwood lies. The most recent Chrysanthemum Festival posed just this dilemma, as many of our chrysanthemum varieties grew fuller and wider than expected. Our production team had gone to great lengths staking, pinching, and tying these plants for months on end to make them perfect for display, so it seemed criminal to send the chrysanthemums back to a growing house

This view of one of the debris piles at Longwood’s composting facility illustrates the challenge Senior Horticulturist Karl Gercens faced when he realized the team had neglected to save stock plants for an irreplaceable crop. Photo by Hank Davis.

where they would not get their moment in the spotlight. The Conservatory staff came up with a great idea for how to use these ample chrysanthemums: create a chrysanthemum meadow in the East Conservatory parterres. The parterres’ water level was lowered, their fountains turned off, and the chrysanthemums took their place, much to the delight of our guests. We continued and even expanded upon this concept when we created, using surplus plants, a brand new “garden path” experience on our Exhibition Hall stage during the 2021 Winter Wonder season. Extra plants are almost always welcome, and we take every opportunity to find creative ways to add more flower power to the displays for everyone’s enjoyment. Generally, we predict with good accuracy how long a plant will be displayworthy. We have lots of institutional knowledge and experience backing us up, but sometimes flowers just last longer or look too nice to remove at a specified time. However, even the most perfect

flowers come to the end of their display life and must make way for the next spectacular display. After a plant is removed, most of its material heads to the compost pile, which in turn nourishes future plants and displays. There are a few cases where a plant is not commercially available, and it is therefore necessary to save our own stock plants. One time we found ourselves facing an unexpected challenge when East Conservatory Manager Karl Gercens realized, after removing our entire crop of Fuchsia ‘Mrs. Marshall’, that we did not have any stock plants remaining. He immediately drove over to the composting facility where he and another staff member dug through the large pile of discarded plant material until they found enough plants of Fuchsia ‘Mrs. Marshall’ to take back to production as stock plants, so we could continue to enjoy that plant today … demonstrating that there are many times when unexpected news is good news.

Education

From Hands-on to Online: Learning Reimagined

“We knew we had an audience that had always wanted to be in ﬂoral design, but were geographically unable.” —Matthew Ross, Director, Continuing Education

By Lynn Schuessler

Photo by Hank Davis

The story of online learning at Longwood begins well before COVID-19. Since 2009, it has been an integral part of our engagement and learning programs—our Virtual Field Trips have delighted K–12 classrooms since 2013, and our free Everything About Orchids and Everything about Aquatics online courses have engaged thousands of adult learners globally since 2018. So when COVID shuttered on-site programs in March 2020, Longwood already had the infrastructure and expertise to ease the transition to virtual learning. Building on what works well, Instructional Designer and Learning Techniques Manager Susan Caldwell stepped up production of Longwood’s third free online course, The World of Plants: Exploring Horticulture, which launched in July 2020 —a year ahead of schedule. Students report that the course expands knowledge: “As a future college horticulture student … I feel like I kind of have a head start”; and inspires curiosity: “I appreciated the wide variety of topics … everything from the history of trees like the ginkgo and leaf identification to wild and ferocious carnivorous plants.” Meanwhile, Continuing Education Director Matthew Ross, the once-upon-atime “morning plant guy” from Toledo

TV, brushed off his storyboarding and videography skills to develop new content, providing practice sessions to instructors to increase their comfort in front of a camera. He also worked closely with the Marketing department to strategize which on-site classes could most successfully migrate online while providing engaging material for Our Gardens Your Home, a collection of regularly refreshed digital content designed to connect guests, Members, and friends both old and new to the Gardens. “It had long been our goal to offer sampler classes to spark curiosity in Continuing Education,” says Ross. “Our Gardens Your Home not only allowed us to engage with our normal audience, but was a first step for people who had not taken classes with us before. We also knew we had an audience that had always wanted to be in floral design, but were geographically unable.” To meet that demand, Longwood introduced Floral Design Basics, a self-paced online class that attracted over 175 students from 21 states and three countries. Intro to Floral Design I and II—core courses in our renowned certificate program—soon followed, with live-streamed sessions and delivery of floral materials to registrants throughout the continental United States.

“COVID expedited getting our certificate courses online and out to a wider audience than had previously been possible,” says Ross, adding that the Floral Design and Landscape Design certificate programs will soon be completely available online. Additional self-paced courses like our new Beginning Bonsai offering will feature guides and videos available 24/7 on our online platform, for learners to access on their own time, from their own homes. From mid-March 2020 to mid-March 2021, the number of individuals who registered for Continuing Education courses increased by 32 percent, extending the department’s reach from 24 states in 2019 to 40 states and three countries in 2020. “Previously, our threshold was 24 participants in a hands-on class. Now we can register as many as 1,000 for a lecture or demo via Zoom, or 30 to 35 for the more intimate hands-on experience involving interactive feedback,” shares Ross. Over the last year, Continuing Education has also hosted expert instructors from across the country and overseas, increased accessibility for homebound caregivers and those with disabilities, and provided opportunities for busy professionals and career-changers. Floral Design I “was a very welcome distraction from the pandemic and helped me identify a possible alternative 9

career option,” shared one student. Although Ross misses the human touch of moments in the classroom, there are silver linings—the three houseplant experts from different walks of life who finally got to “meet” while teaching 100 online students who shared their passion; or friends and family, separated by COVID or simply distance, mixing (and sipping!) herbal and honey cocktails or crafting Mother's Day bouquets during online course offerings. Connections also grew between Longwood departments when School and Youth teamed up with Performing Arts to present a live webinar by storyteller Charlotte Blake Alston about George Washington Carver, complete with supporting online activities, reaching over 1,000 students during Black History Month. “Given how well this webinar was received,” says School and Youth Programs Director Heather Drzal, “we plan to further collaborate with Performing Arts to create 10

a series of opportunities for children.” In a world gone virtual, Drzal feels it’s more critical than ever to spark children’s curiosity about the importance of plants in their lives. Distance Learning Manager Kellie Saraceno provided that very spark with her interactive broadcast of A Plant’s Life to the Longwood Board of Directors in 2016, launching our free Virtual Field Trips for K–12 classrooms. The program thrived— with eight topics currently available, and growing—and put Longwood educators in a good position to reach students during the pandemic. As more school districts and teachers became comfortable with Zoom, School and Youth was able to reach more than 23,000 students worldwide through 462 programs in 2020–21. “Although we were not able to physically visit you,” says a first-grade teacher, “you did a wonderful job at making it feel like we were right there

“Although we were not able to physically visit you,” says a ﬁrst-grade teacher, “you did a wonderful job at making it feel like we were right there with you. Your presentation was great and tied into what we have been learning about just perfectly!”

with you. Your presentation was great and tied into what we have been learning about just perfectly!” Still, with only one virtual learning studio, the department was unable to meet all incoming requests. In a redesign hastened by COVID, the Arbor Day Virtual Field Trips, previously offered live on-demand during April, were scheduled on four specific dates via Zoom. Each session was open to 1,000 registrants— though “one” registrant might be an entire classroom—greatly increasing access to the program. To continue to reach new audiences, School and Youth is planning new digital Unearth It! real-life learning projects, teacher professional development, and innovative programs like Summer Camp in a Box, with supplies mailed to kids for a week’s worth of activities and Zoom sessions to share their discoveries—all while reshaping on-site programs and in-person

outreach initiatives like Traveling Seeds, with Longwood educators visiting firstgrade classrooms when safe to do so. Ross and Drzal look forward to the day when students can return to Longwood. “On-site programs will come back,” says Ross, “but will most likely follow a model of high-flex learning, with multiple modes of delivery: online, in-person, or both, including asynchronous presentations paired with hands-on studios, whether that ‘studio’ is at Longwood or at home.” “Now that most schools have the infrastructure to support these virtual opportunities, I think teachers will continue to seek them out,” agrees Drzal. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 56.4 million students were projected to attend elementary, middle, and high schools across the US in fall 2020. “That’s a lot of impact opportunity, which could never be touched without the digital world.” 11

Horticulture

Going the Distance

Longwood Reimagined: A New Garden Experience goes far beyond opening new worlds for us—it also challenges us to rethink the way in which we grow and display mainstays of our renowned horticulture collection, as well as encourages us to embark on new collaborative opportunities to enable such growth. As part of Longwood Reimagined, we will soon be embarking on an enhancement and renewal of our famed Waterlily Court, refreshing this beloved aquatic garden to redefine it as an outdoor room and further strengthening it as a central destination amid our new West Conservatory and Bonsai Courtyard, our relocated Cascade Garden, and our existing East and Main Conservatories. As a result, our Waterlily Court will be unavailable to guests from the fall of 2021 until its summer 2024 reopening … but the waterlilies for which this iconic space is known—particularly our famed Victoria water-platters—must have a space in which they may grow and thrive while awaiting their newly refreshed home. Enter a new collaborative agreement between Longwood and Naples Botanical Garden in Florida to support the growth and future of Victoria throughout the Longwood Reimagined project. This agreement focuses on continuing the seed production of Victoria amazonica, Victoria cruziana, and their resulting Victoria ‘Longwood Hybrid’ while the Waterlily Court is undergoing revitalization. Under the leadership of Longwood Senior Horticulturist Tim Jennings, Naples Botanical Garden will trial Victoria seed production during the 2021 growing season and then continue production during the 2022 and 2023 growing seasons—a vital

Caring for our aquatic collection during Longwood Reimagined calls for far-reaching collaboration. By Katie Mobley

initiative to help Longwood maintain a source of viable Victoria seed while the space normally used for its growth and display remains unavailable. While we regularly ship Victoria seed to other institutions to grow for their own displays, this serves as the first time we’ve entered an agreement with another institution to grow Victoria seed for us. Longwood began growing V. amazonica, native to Guyana and the Amazon River basin, and V. cruziana, native to the Parana River in northern Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia, in the 1950s. A cross between the two, called ‘Longwood Hybrid’, was developed here by Patrick Nutt in 1960, and first flowered in 1961. We’ve repeated this cross every summer since 1960, with new plants started from seed indoors in midJanuary to go on display for public viewing starting in late May. Beloved for its flower, ornamental attributes, and massive size in which a single leaf can reach 8 feet in diameter, Victoria ‘Longwood Hybrid’ has long been a favorite among guests—not only of Longwood but also of other public gardens throughout the world. For decades, to support capacity building and Victoria conservation, and to share our intellectual capital with our peers, Longwood has distributed surplus seed to a global community of public gardens from the Missouri Botanical Garden to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Those garden recipients have not only germinated, displayed, and interpreted these awe-inspiring plants … but have helped share the beauty of Victoria ‘Longwood Hybrid’ with a global community. Fast forward to present times. To kick off our collaboration with Naples Botanical Garden, in January 2021 Longwood sowed

seed of V. amazonica and V. cruziana in preparation for an April 2021 shipment of six 4-inch potted young plants—three each of V. amazonica and V. cruziana to serve as seed parents—to Naples, as well as gathered and sent cultural information on Victoria soil, fertilization, and general care known to be effective at Longwood. Throughout the trial and growing seasons, Naples Botanical Garden horticulturists will support the growth of the young parent plants, pollinate the flowers of V. amazonica and V. cruziana, and then harvest the resulting seeds, temporarily storing them until they’re transported back to Longwood for long-term storage, as seeds typically last for two to three years. Throughout these efforts, Longwood and Naples will hold regular virtual meetings to share the progress and health of the plants. Longwood staff will visit Naples Botanical Garden at times of critical Victoria lifecycle steps—such as initial planting and pollination—to support Naples Botanical Garden staff. In turn we will host Naples Botanical Garden horticulturists here at Longwood for training and learning experiences, sharing our expertise and learning from our peers in return. The first Victoria seed harvesting efforts at Naples will take place in either October or November of 2021, and the first seed collected at Naples will be shipped back to Longwood shortly thereafter. Based on the number of seeds received at Longwood, any extra seeds will be shared with other institutions. While a single water-platter plant can produce hundreds of seeds, this partnership with Naples Botanical Garden—and all it means for Longwood and the continued growth of Victoria the world over—is simply beyond measure. Opposite: Horticulturist Rick Fountas prepares a hardy Nymphaea plant for display against a Longwood Reimagined backdrop. Photo by William Hill.

Above: Victoria seeds like these will be grown at Naples Botanical Garden for the duration of the Longwood Reimagined project. The first seed harvesting at Naples is expected in October or November of 2021. Throughout the next few

years, we will continue to grow some Victoria behind the scenes here at Longwood to help protect against unforeseen interruptions by Mother Nature, such as hurricanes or extreme weather conditions in Florida that

could destroy the plants. When Victoria is grown in Longwood’s waterlily pools, we gather seeds for next year’s display from the ripening fruits in late September, at the end of the growing season. Photo by Daniel Traub.

While we regularly ship Victoria seed to other institutions to grow for their own displays, this serves as the ﬁrst time we’ve entered an agreement with another institution to grow Victoria seed for us.

Above: Senior Horticulturist Tim Jennings and Conservatory Display Intern Andrew Mell prepare to transfer a Victoria plant in the production greenhouse to its new home in the temporary outdoor pools at the nursery. Photo by William Hill.

Above: Senior Horticulturist Tim Jennings gently unwraps a Victoria leaf in one of the temporary outdoor pools at the Longwood nursery. Photo by William Hill.

Horticulture

How our plant exploration efforts evolved and adapted in light of the global pandemic. By Peter Zale

When Borders Are Closed Since its inception in the late 1950s, our plant exploration program has continuously evolved to meet the needs of the Gardens, as we interact and cultivate relationships with horticulturists and botanists all over the world to find, obtain, and trial new plants each year. Under normal circumstances, we obtain these new plants from plant exploration trips to foreign countries, through seed distributions from specialty plant societies and public gardens throughout the world, and cooperation with breeders worldwide … but, like many other ventures over the past year, our plant exploration program had to evolve and adapt in light of the global pandemic. A rich schedule of travel and exploration that was planned for 2020—including return trips to China, Uzbekistan, Japan, and Vietnam—had to be put on hold when the pandemic struck in March 2020. This new reality resulted in a rapid evolution of the program to meet the travel constraints limiting plant exploration efforts while continuing to make relevant contributions to the program and Gardens. Given these travel restraints, we refocused and redoubled our efforts toward conserving and collecting native plant species, as well as maintaining and strengthening our relationships in Japan through contract plant exploration by one of our strongest plant exploration partners. Since 2015, a Longwood research program focused on conservation of the approximately 60 native orchid species of Pennsylvania has

Opposite, clockwise from top left: Platanthera grandiflora in Schuylkill County, PA; The fruits of Arisaema serratum (photo by Shigeharu Matsuda); A harrowing view from the collection site of

been gaining momentum … and what was already a robust research program has benefited from extra attention over the last year, leading to not only fantastic conservation advancements, but future display opportunities here at Longwood. Since travel in Pennsylvania was possible for us this last year, we’ve spent significant effort on field work aimed at relocating some of Pennsylvania’s rarest native orchids and the addition of new species to the research program. A primary focus was the flamboyantly beautiful bog or fringed orchids (Platanthera spp.), which are rapidly becoming rare in the wild due to invasive species pressure, habitat destruction, deer browse, and propagation difficulty. Through careful study of the flowering and seed maturation time of several species, including Platanthera cristata, P. grandiflora, P. peramoena, and P. psycodes, Longwood scientists were able to make major breakthroughs by successfully germinating seeds and culturing seedlings. If success continues, some of the seedlings are destined to be restored to natural areas where they once grew, used in displays throughout Longwood, and the information published to support orchid conservation efforts worldwide. Although we were not able to travel to international destinations to search for new plants, strong partnerships already created in Japan resulted in the opportunity for collaborative field work focused on the collection of a few key plant groups.

Rhododendron makinoi; The lower Susquehanna River looking toward the Holtwood Dam, York County, PA; Asplenium trichomanes in Berks County, PA; Shigeharu Matsuda doing

field research in Japan; Identifying cobra lilies (Arisaema spp.) in the field requires precise knowledge and measurements of diagnostic characters (pictured at center).

We worked with our friend and colleague, Mr. Shigeharu Matsuda of Yatsugatake Flower Power; due to his home location in central Yamanashi Prefecture, we were able to develop a COVID-safe plant exploration schedule focused on the mountainous regions of central Honshu, Japan. This work resulted in him collecting and shipping to Longwood via the USDA inspection center in Linden, New Jersey, valuable collections of key plant groups such as rhododendrons, as well as new-to-the-Gardens woodland perennials, such as the cobra lilies (Arisaema spp.) and other unusual plants that help support display and collections development at Longwood. With travel restrictions still in place, plant exploration plans for 2021 will continue to focus on native orchids, but also on other important native plant groups such as oaks, milkweeds, and more that will enrich different areas of the Gardens. We are also planning on additional collaborative field work in Japan to focus on lesser-known, but amazingly beautiful spring ephemerals that are virtually unknown outside of Japan. Although we are hopeful that international plant exploration can start again as the pandemic subsides, local plant exploration over the last year promises to be particularly impactful and will serve to mark a special evolutionary process in the history of Longwood’s plant exploration program as a whole.

Features

An important aspect of Longwood Reimagined is the preservation of the Cascade Garden, the last intact garden in North America designed by Roberto Burle Marx. As part of the preservation, each stone in the garden was tagged, cleaned, and barcoded prior to being stored. The stones will be placed in their same respective locations when the garden is reassembled in its new glasshouse. Photo by Hank Davis.

The Arts

Everything from books and bonsai to people and palms are on the move as we embark on Longwood Reimagined.

ON THE MOVE

Carts with three rubber wheels have been used by horticulture staff in the Conservatory since around the 1920s. Our archives indicate the carts were designed and built in-house, with slight modifications over the years. Today, approximately 15 carts are in use, including these two, which sit empty in the lower horticulture equipment storage area, as they prepare to be moved to their new homes in the East Conservatory and production headhouse. Photo by Steve Fenton.

On February 18, 2021, we announced Longwood Reimagined: A New Garden Experience, an initiative that will expand and transform our renowned Conservatory and surrounding grounds across 17 acres. Blending the historic and the visionary, Longwood Reimagined is our most complicated project in a century and includes stunning new buildings, wondrous new indoor and outdoor gardens, surprising new guest experiences, and much more. We’re preserving and

Above: Continuing Education Associate Nancy Sharp was tasked with packing an array of supplies from the Acer and Betula Continuing Education classrooms, including spools of ribbon used in our floral design classes. Photo by Carol Gross. Right: Purchaser Tracy Stipe packs up her office in preparation for her move from the Horticulture Building to temporary office space in the nearby Nuttery. Tracy was one of nearly 40 staff who moved office locations. Photo by Carol DeGuiseppi.

enhancing our cherished spaces to better showcase and grow our outstanding collections, while reflecting our founder’s vision and embodying our mission to create a world apart accessible to all. Slated for completion in fall 2024, we look forward to sharing the journey with you and celebrating milestones along the way. Perhaps our first milestone was preparing for the project to begin. That meant moving people and offices to new locations, as well as our archives,

equipment, supplies, and more. If you have ever moved, you know how challenging it can be. But can you imagine dismantling a garden stone by stone and plant by plant for later reassembly in a new glasshouse . . . or packing an entire archives collection that includes everything from rare books to rugs? Or moving a 1,380-pound fern and a 20-foot-tall palm? As you will see in the pages to follow, we lovingly moved all that and much more.

Above and below: Six Lord & Burnham estate greenhouses dating back to the 1920s were carefully dismantled and salvaged, with each item (including trusses, rafters, brackets,

and a range of other structural elements) identified, tagged, and then stored for reassembly at a later date. The entire process took nearly eight weeks. Photos by Hank Davis.

Left: Our male Cycas circinalis is moved from the Palm House, en route to its new East Conservatory home. At a height of 20 feet, a width of 22 feet, and a trunk circumference of 4 feet and 2 inches, the sheer size of the cycad required we remove a portion of the Palm House exterior to accommodate its extraction. It joins 54 other plants that have new homes in the Main and East Conservatories. In all, we moved more than 6,000 plants from the previous West Conservatory to nursery and greenhouse spaces, where we’re holding them for future display here at Longwood. Opposite: Another new resident in the East Conservatory is our 1,380-pound rabbit’s-foot fern (Davallia fejeensis ‘Major’), which has been part of our collection for nearly 70 years. The giant hanging basket measures a sprawling 9.5 feet in diameter, which required careful planning and moving from its previous Tropical Terrace location to its new Camellia House home. Photos by Hank Davis.

Above: Our archives are a rich treasure-trove that tell the history of our Gardens through documents, drawings, images, artifacts, and more. Archives Manager Judy Stevenson created a spreadsheet inventory of every box or container in the archives. In all, 1,944 boxes of

documents, audio-visual material, organ rolls, and published works; 50 flat file drawers of display design plans, maps, and posters; 202 oversized plan file folders of architectural drawings; 82 tubes of rolled drawings and maps; and two carpets were moved to offsite storage. Photo by Steve Fenton.

Left and opposite: The Library and Archives team faced the daunting task of packing the nearly 20,000 books from our library, including many rare volumes, for the move to climate-controlled, offsite storage. Each barcoded book was loaded onto heavy-duty book carts and protectively wrapped for the journey. The barcodes allow us to track the location of the books throughout the process. In addition we worked with the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts of Philadelphia, who helped us protect our large-format folios by creating special boxes to house them. Photos by Hank Davis.

Seems only fitting to find hundreds of clay pots in the Potting Shed, awaiting transport to their new home in our Research & Production greenhouse. Photo by Hank Davis.

In preparation for the move, our collection of more than 300 bonsai pots was carefully photographed and inventoried by a team of staff and volunteers. Each pot was photographed from different angles, then marked with an

inventory number using the same archival technique we use to label historic artifacts. Photographs and inventory numbers are uploaded to our digital image library, where they can be viewed for reference by staff. Photo by Hank Davis.

Mail Handler Sarah Quinn and Assistant Project Manager Jennifer Perilli peer through the now-empty mailboxes in the mailroom of the Horticulture Building. Photo by Carol DeGuiseppi.

Sustainability

Thinking in Ecosystem Time The role technology plays in advancing science-based adaptive land management continues to grow. By Lea Johnson and Kristie Lane Anderson

Right: Associate Director, Land Stewardship and Ecology Dr. Lea Johnson walks through a gap in a fallen tree. This huge trunk has been left in place to serve as habitat for woodland creatures, and to enrich the soil as it decays. Historically, many forests were not easy to walk through because of fallen logs and “hummock and hollow” topography caused by the root tip-ups and adjacent pits at the bases of fallen trees. These pits fill with water, providing temporary pools where tree frogs lay their eggs and tadpoles mature.

Left: Science Director of the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program at Western Pennsylvania Conservancy Ephraim Zimmerman uses a compass to determine slope direction. Longwood is partnering with the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program and local botanical expert Janet Ebert to map plant communities across more than 700 acres of Longwood’s natural lands, as the first phase of a new ecological baseline study. This study establishes permanent plots that will help us understand how our plant communities change over time as they grow, and how they respond to our management and the changing environment.

Photos by Becca Mathias

Left: Assistant Ecology Technician Evan Horne measures 4 to 6 feet above the soil surface to determine where he will measure the diameter of a large black gum tree (Nyssa sylvatica).

Claire Ciafré (left) and Jaci Braund (right), ecologists from the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program at Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, measure the boundaries of a sampling plot to ensure the accuracy of a new measurement technique. The Longwood Land Stewardship and Ecology team uses a laser hypsometer (or range-finder) to quickly measure straight-line distances through dense vegetation without the need to snake a measuring tape through shrubbery. Below: Lea Johnson demonstrates the use of a foliage filter on a laser hypsometer for Claire Ciafré.

Right: Ecology Technician Kristie Lane Anderson (left) trains Land Stewardship and Ecology Intern Maya Sarkar (right) on how to use a custom GIS application for data collection on the very first day of Sarkar’s year-long internship with the Land Stewardship and Ecology group.

Opposite: This beautiful spot was chosen for ecological observation because it exemplifies the majestic and unique mature forest of the Forest Walk. The Forest Walk is an old-growth forest—a place with mature trees, abundant plant and animal life, and a complex structure where seedlings sprout and old wood breaks down, forming deep soils. This ecosystem supports a rich array of native species. Tall trees provide food and shelter to hundreds of species of insects and animals while they’re alive, and then serve as “habitat high-rises” that are home to creatures from woodpeckers to mushrooms as they decay. The forest floor is home to shade-tolerant herbs, and to ephemeral wildflowers that emerge from the leaf litter early in spring to drink up sun before the canopy of leaves closes overhead. Mature forests like this one are rare in the Pennsylvania Piedmont region, as most were harvested for fuel or lumber long ago. This forest was set aside by the Peirce family and preserved by the creation of Longwood Gardens.

The oldest trees in Longwood’s forests sprouted from acorns before William Penn arrived in Pennsylvania. Their huge trunks grew as the land around them changed, slowly putting on ring after ring of wood. Perhaps the patterns of these rings remember the American chestnuts that once grew tall around them, as thin rings in early years of shade. People and trees operate in different time scales—a beech that put out its first leaves the day the oldest living person was born would just now be approaching middle age. Yet the growth of a forest happens alongside faster creatures too, like the fast-moving blur of insects whose populations boom and bust from year to year, and ephemeral herbs that flower quickly and die, leaving only seeds behind. Thinking in ecosystem time requires holding both the quick and the slow in mind. It’s also one of the big challenges of managing land for biodiversity. Longwood’s Land Stewardship and Ecology team takes actions to set things in motion—preparing a place for new growth, planting a seed we hope will spread—and a whole career may pass before the result is seen. To see both the fast and the slow changes we need data. Data are what we choose to remember. (Data are plural because one item of data is a datum—thank the Greeks.) Data are in Thoreau’s notebooks, carefully documenting the first flowers each springtime. Data are in dusty boxes in a closet, waiting to be

rediscovered. They’re in billions of pixels of satellite imagery showing us the greening of the planet each summer. The data that are most useful for managing a particular place may be a mix of old notebooks, digital spreadsheets, photographs, and people’s memories. At Longwood we have been collecting data for decades as part of our research and conservation programs. (The careful records tracking our plant collections are a subject deserving attention of their own!) Data describing the wild plants and animals of Longwood’s natural lands include observations of a wide array of creatures, from sedges and orchids to bees and salamanders. Volunteers are an essential part of our long-term relationship with good information. Our birding team, for example, has been making checklists since 1970, while another team has been tracking nesting success of Eastern Bluebirds for decades, and our meadow bloom team has recorded when hundreds of species of herbs have bloomed across the Meadow Garden since its opening. Thanks to these volunteers, we can see changes in seasonal timing, increases in bluebird populations over time, and an astounding array of birds that visit and breed in our natural areas. As in all science, data collection has historically been done by hand on paper. Those records have in recent decades been transcribed with care to digital formats—a time-consuming process best

Right: Land Stewardship and Ecology Intern Maya Sarkar records data in a custom application built by Kristie Lane Anderson and Lea Johnson of the Land Stewardship and Ecology group. Anderson and Johnson have built a series of apps to enable rapid, high-accuracy data collection in the field. These phone-based tools upload directly to online maps and databases, with no need for puzzling over messy handwriting or drying out wet paper data sheets after a rainstorm.

done by the person whose handwriting is being deciphered! While the birding team has been using the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s eBird platform for a few years already, until recently other teams were still using paper to observe, and then painstakingly entering data later on. During the COVID-19 closure, we took the opportunity of lots of computer time at home to shift all of our teams to direct digital data collection. The first team to make the jump was the bluebird team. Our bluebird boxes are now part of an international citizen science program from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Project NestWatch. Volunteers are now able to use their smartphones to record bluebirds building nests, laying eggs, growing, and fledging, and the data contribute to bluebird conservation by adding to scientific knowledge of how populations change over time. We then built a specialized smartphone application for the meadow bloom team that helps them to more easily record all of the flowers that bloom in the meadow through the growing season. Now volunteers need only to enter a few letters of either the common or scientific name of each plant they see during a weekly observation

walk, and the rest of the name pops up automatically to be selected from a list. This makes it less crucial that everyone on the team know the exact spelling of every Latin name, and instead of rifling through long paper lists the team can spend more time looking at the flowers. The biggest change in our ability to record place-based data is now underway: building a Geographic Information Systems database to help us track not only where plants are, but what management techniques we employ. A plant community mapping study will soon reveal the full diversity of our natural habitats. These new tools will give us maps of where native plant populations thrive and where invasive species are, speeding the management planning process. Just as importantly, data describing how things are now will, in turn, become a record of how things were in the past—helping us and future land stewards to see change. Whether that change is a thriving rare plant population, a management practice that needs adjustment to maximize its effectiveness, or growth of a newly planted forest area, this new system helps us to visualize changes both fast and slow—and to think in ecosystem time.

Ecological science shares tools with forestry, surveying, and other ﬁelds requiring precise measurements. Some observations can be made digitally, but many must be made by hand.

Left, left to right: Associate Director, Land Stewardship and Ecology Dr. Lea Johnson; Assistant Ecology Technician Evan Horne; Land Stewardship and Ecology Intern Maya Sarkar; and Ecology Technician Kristie Lane Anderson. Opposite: Ecological science shares tools with forestry, surveying, and other fields requiring precise measurements. Some observations can be made digitally, but many must be made by hand. Skill and expertise are needed to correctly identify wild plants and select sampling locations. Pictured here are (clockwise from the top): pin flags, meter tape, compass, caliper, clinometer, diameter tape, and chaining pins.

A Century of Floral Sun Parlors: Part Four

Pierre du Pont resigned as president of the DuPont Company on May 1, 1919, although he remained chairman of the board until 1940. In “retirement,” he hoped to pursue personal interests, but by November 1920 he was engaged almost full time in reorganizing a floundering General Motors as its president until 1923 and chairman until 1929. Fortunately he was very good at multi-tasking. Planning for Longwood’s Conservatory with Ferruccio Vitale had come to a halt in April 1917. By late 1918, with World War I ending, Pierre decided to continue developing his ideas and, he later said, help ease unemployment in the postwar economy by undertaking construction projects. Ten days before the Armistice of November 11, he wrote to architect A. J. Harper: I have been greatly interested in the fine work you did at Mr. Raskob’s residence, not only in securing a wonderful whole but also in the display of care in working out details to the best conclusion. This interest in your work and the advice of Mr. Raskob leads me to write you concerning two projects that I have in mind for after the war work, which I am beginning to think will not be long deferred. First, I have offered to donate the funds for the construction of an addition to the Chester County Hospital at West Chester, Pennsylvania …. The second project is the construction of a series of

Rendering of the Orangery and extended wings by J. Walter Cope, c. 1920. The Cope family legend was that this elegant drawing won him a place on the Longwood design team within DuPont

Engineering, where he had worked since May 1919. Cope was skilled in the BeauxArts vocabulary and had previously drawn beautiful renderings of other buildings, so no doubt he could visualize the finished

product based on preliminary concepts. This was exactly the kind of restrained classicism that appealed to Pierre du Pont. Courtesy Louise and Walter E. Cope.

green houses or conservatories. Unexplained this may not be of interest to you. However, my ideas are quite beyond ordinary green house construction. The buildings are to be monumental in character, designed to exploit the sentiments and ideas associated with plants and flowers in a large way. On the other hand the expansion of the project is somewhat limited as we will have to conform to the character of the surrounding country which is agricultural and of very simple architecture and landscape effect. The seeming incongruity of these two requirements is very interesting to me and I will look forward with much pleasure to working out the problems which call for some clever work in the way of architecture and planning.

& Harper in Wilmington, notable for creating the “Patio” residence and service building at Raskob’s Archmere estate in Claymont, Delaware. Pierre proposed that as of November 18,1* 1918, “you will enter my employ on salary of $500 a month, plus $30 a month estimated cost of operating automobile. You are to undertake the designing of the greenhouse and conservatory proposition at Longwood, and also to act as advisory architect, or in other capacity in connection with the reconstruction of the Chester County Hospital at West Chester.” Pierre would pay expenses and furnish an office plus staff as mutually agreed upon. If the Conservatory were built, Harper would be compensated proportionately. Pierre promised employment for at least six months even if the project was halted. Presumably Harper was given all the sketches and plans developed by Vitale, but there is no written indication of how Pierre’s design intent differed from what had already been planned. Thus the earliest existing blueprints of the entire complex (one was reproduced in the Longwood Chimes Issue 302) probably reflect the general concept as of 1917, albeit more refined. Harper’s Wilmington office was diagonally across the street from the

DuPont Building, so they could meet as frequently as needed. Pierre soon suggested that Harper visit the new James Duke greenhouses in New Jersey, although it is not certain if he went. The first task was to design and construct Longwood’s growing houses, to the west, that would provide specialty food crops and flowers for cutting as well as flowering plants for the spacious Orangery and Exhibition Hall display houses to the east. In March 1919, Harper received a rough estimate of $148,000 from King Construction Company of New York to build eight connected greenhouses and one stand-alone house (ultimately connected) that would comprise the Growing Group. At the same time, Harper hired Robert Schoenijahn (1882–1963) at $350 per month as his engineer to design the mechanical systems. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Schoenijahn was a 1906 Cornell graduate who moved to Wilmington in 1916 to work on that city’s Public Building. He specialized in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning along with other utilities and would continue consulting with Longwood for decades. One of his first duties was to estimate coal consumption for the greenhouses, which Pierre also calculated for oil versus coal. Four-and-a-half months after his hiring,

Alexander James Harper (1877–1940) was born in Massachusetts and studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1901. He worked for New York and Boston firms before joining McKim, Mead, & White, helping design New York’s Pennsylvania Station and the adjacent General Post Office. In 1910 he was given a year’s leave to tour Italy. In 1912 he was employed by James Gamble Rogers and worked on the Yale Club of New York City. In 1915 he joined with Clay McClure to form McClure

* See page 48 for all footnotes.

Schoenijahn visited the Duke greenhouses to learn as much as possible from Andrew Macdonald, Duke’s Scottish-born garden superintendent, who reviewed the proposed plans of Longwood’s houses from “practical and economical” points of view. Pierre paid $500 for this advice but thought it well worthwhile, as “Mr. Macdonald has been very kind in his attentions to Mr. Harper.” The final bid package for the growing houses was sent to four companies in April, and Lord & Burnham (L&B) was awarded the contract, to be completed by September 1919 at a cost of $70,560. L&B was the country’s leading manufacturer of large, ornamental greenhouses, having built San Francisco’s Conservatory of Flowers, Pittsburgh’s Phipps, Asheville’s Biltmore conservatory, and the New York Botanical Garden range. Schoenijahn visited the Lord & Burnham factory in Irvington, NY, to inspect the mechanical gears used to control ventilation, resulting in additional demands on L&B to meet custom specifications. By August 1919 when progress was lagging, Harper hired a construction specialist to serve as a liaison between the office, the work site, and L&B’s factory. The construction of the Growing Group was a difficult, drawn-out process that took much longer than planned. In the flurry of letters between Pierre, Harper, and Lord & Burnham, it is difficult to know who was at fault. Pierre expected the L&B contract to be finished by September 1919 regardless,

Key to Plan: 20

Above: Harper’s Sketch #1, dated February 17, 1919, showing initial proposed usage. Key to plan at right.

Top: A. J. Harper, with sons Harrison (center) and Alexander, Jr., c. 1913. Courtesy Charles Thomas Paul.

1. Oranges 2. Plant House 3. Casino 4. Tropical Plants 5. Peaches 6. Peaches 7. Display 8. Display 9. Flowers · Orchids 10. Tropical Plant Annex 11. Roses 12. Figs 13. Pineapples 14. Pinks · Plants 15. Melons 16. Grapes 17. Potting & Service 18. Propagating House 19. Propagating House 20. Boiler House under Terrace 21. Garden

especially because he had already purchased large, tender azaleas that needed winter protection. Harper focused on details (e.g., door jambs and decorative elements) that required revised shop drawings and retooling, causing delays in producing otherwise standard components. L&B noted to Harper on September 5, 1919, that there “has been a great deal of extra work on this contract which should never have been necessary if you had more faith in our ability as greenhouse builders…. A greenhouse is not an ornamental building—we manufacture them on a production basis, the same as Ford manufactures his automobiles…and if you went to them and asked them to have one wind shield or one mud guard made a little different than their standard, we doubt whether you could get them to change it.” Harper responded, somewhat sarcastically, “it is quite clearly expressed in the contract that a Pierce-Arrow [known for expensive luxury cars] and not a Ford was desired.” For their part, Lord & Burnham kept protesting that the foundation work and flooring that were Longwood’s responsibility were delayed and incomplete, resulting in a muddy site; Longwood countered that L&B’s specifications were late. No other project during Pierre’s years at Longwood produced as many harsh words with refusals or delays by the owner to pay installments until work was completely

finished, which it was by November 1920. In January 1921, Pierre wrote to L&B, “I have been inclined to disregard your letters for the reason that you accorded me similar treatment for quite a year during the slow construction of greenhouses which were promised in three months and were not delivered for fifteen. As soon as I find time to look up your account, I shall do so.” Final payment was made in April 1921, from which Pierre deducted $500 for damage to a specimen azalea and also refused to pay $875 in interest “in view of the very unsatisfactory service given me.” In 1926, a new L&B representative wrote to Pierre hoping to regain Longwood’s business despite previous “misunderstandings.” Pierre responded, noting the year-long construction delay but adding, “Naturally I have been prejudiced against you since that time, but as your work has proven satisfactory I shall not hesitate to take bids from Lord and Burnham in the future.” As for the rest of the complex, Alice du Pont gave her opinion on December 6, 1919, when she wrote to Pierre from New York City where she was spending a few days, “I should like very much to see you give up the Central House of the greenhouses next year. So far you have had no fun out of the planning of the houses at all, and I feel sure Mr. Harper will have all he can attend to if he oversees the hospital building next year. I wonder if you will think me unfair if I say that I do not think Mr. Harper has done as well as I expected him to. I am tempted to suggest

that you try someone else for the main house, and am inclined to agree with Rod [brotherin-law H. Rodney Sharp] that perhaps more of an artist and less of an architect might be the person to try on the central house.” By the end of December 1919, Pierre had in fact decided to have the DuPont Engineering Company (he was its president from 1917 to 1920) design the structural steelwork for the large display complex east of the Growing Group. These spaces were totally different from conventional greenhouse construction and more akin to expansive world’s fair exhibition halls. DuPont Engineering had designed explosives plants during World War I and was fully attuned to creating large, technically complicated structures. A few months before the 1918 Armistice, Engineering had, according to one Wilmington newspaper, 2,500 salaried staff and 50,000 workmen. Although it greatly downsized after the war, it still took on many independent projects, especially for General Motors. On January 13, 1920, Pierre and Alice visited Pembroke, the extravagant Gold Coast estate of the late Joseph R. De Lamar (1843–1918) in Glen Cove on Long Island, then owned by De Lamar’s daughter. Pierre had two objectives: to see what one newspaper called “the largest private conservatory in the world,” and to hear the Aeolian residence organ, something he wanted for Longwood. Aeolian submitted proposals for a Longwood instrument on January 28, and six weeks later Pierre signed a contract for a 63-stop

Right: Pembroke, Glen Cove, Long Island, NY. The house featured an expansive conservatory which included a tropical house with a swimming pool surrounding a gazebo island. The organ was in the main wing, to the right.

Six of the nine Growing Houses under construction, looking northeast, winter 1919 –1920. Work had not yet started on the Rose House. The tenant house (on the site of the present Camellia House) and then the barn were eventually torn down.

The last house to be built by Lord & Burnham was the #1 house, the Rose House, with a stepped interior to accommodate the sloping site. Drawings were approved in December 1919 but the framing did not arrive until May 1920.

The nine Growing Houses under construction, looking west, in 1920. The Rose House (#1, left) and two small propagation houses (#7 & #8, right) adjoining the yet-to-be-built Service Building are only partially glazed. The other houses were to shelter (starting from bottom) azaleas; grapes; melons; miscellaneous plants; pineapples; and figs.

instrument costing $54,200. It would be installed in the northeast corner of the Exhibition Hall. By February 1920, DuPont Engineering was working on the Orangery. Harper’s preliminary design was revised by Engineering, then Harper was asked to comment. A few changes were suggested, but the most interesting observation by Harper was that “in developing the interiors…the character be kept as unarchitectural in detail as conditions will permit, as the principal effect is to be obtained by planting and the growth of vines arranged on all wall spaces, columns, etc.” Which is what Pierre wanted all along. Discussion was also held regarding forced air heating versus cheaper natural convection; the latter ultimately was selected. Further clarification came on March 3, 1920, at a meeting outlining DuPont Engineering’s job responsibilities for the Orangery, Exhibition Hall, and Peach Houses. Engineering was to act as architects 42

and consulting engineers on designs, prepare drawings and specifications which would be shared immediately with Longwood’s Construction Division chief engineer William Francis and with A. J. Harper for comments, secure bids, and check contractors’ drawings. Francis would then execute approved contracts and oversee all construction in the field. In March 1920, Harper submitted estimates for completing design of the other buildings—the Casino (Music Room), tropical plant and orchid houses (north of the future Waterlily Display but never built), Reception Suite, and the Service Building (Potting Shed, Boiler Room, and Dormitory). He thought it advisable to open a branch office in New York City at more than $4,000 a month with a staff of seven to get everything done. But on March 16, 1920, Pierre decided to terminate Harper’s services for both the Conservatory complex and the Chester County Hospital and turn everything

over to DuPont Engineering. Pierre retained only Robert Schoenijahn, out of Harper’s eight Wilmington employees, to do the mechanical, electrical, and sanitary design. The financial settlement was contentious, with both parties having different interpretations of how much work had actually been accomplished. Harper had prepared 127 sketches and blueprints for Longwood and 49 for the hospital but was not privy to detailed construction costs for work completed, so he could only estimate that he was due a commission of $41,100 for Longwood work and $17,510 for the hospital, totaling $58,610 with a balance due him of about $34,000. Pierre saw it differently, noting that this was not the usual arrangement for working with an architect since Pierre was paying the expense of maintaining the office and paying salaries besides. He proposed a settlement of $15,833 but after further negotiation agreed to $18,099, noting that the main building

Left: Melons growing in an estate house. Below: The Rose House, c. 1922, feeatured more than 2,100 plants in 13 varieties.

Above: Prized azaleas were first moved into the new House #9 on October 2, 1919, and are shown here in early spring 1920. This view looks southeast, towards the Longwood Meetinghouse, and shows that major construction on the Acacia Passage, Peach House, and Orangery had not yet begun. This greenhouse contained the Mediterranean Garden from 1993 until 2021. Below: J. Walter Cope (1884–1973). Photo courtesy Judith Cope Hudson.

and casino were “in a stage of preliminary sketches only.” Meanwhile, design on the main building was progressing. Pierre and Alice left by train on January 22 for a vacation in California then by ship to Hawaii and did not return until February 28. During Pierre’s absence, H. Rodney Sharp represented him. Among those in attendance at a meeting on February 13, 1920, to discuss the ventilation system was 36-year-old architect J. Walter Cope, who had started at DuPont Engineering in May 1919; this is the first mention of his name in the Longwood files. Cope would oversee the aesthetics of the pending building. James Walter Cope (1884–1973) was born in West Chester, PA, and spent his early years in Florida. He was the nephew of George Cope, the now-celebrated painter of local landscapes and still lifes. J. Walter returned to Chester County at age 13 and attended Westtown School. He became a carpenter then also apprenticed with an architect for six months. At age 27 he married and in 1913 at age 29 he 43

left his job and with his wife toured Europe for three months, no doubt studying as many architectural monuments as possible; he loved the Beaux-Arts style. On March 9, 1920, Pierre met with William Francis and with Wills Johnson and J. Walter Cope from DuPont Engineering’s Design Division to make 25 significant decisions needed to advance the Conservatory plan. Some choices would cut costs, such as eliminating steel reinforcement in the tunnel floors and walls if there were no soil thrust; others would add expense, such as all floors in the Orangery and Exhibition Hall to be travertine or equivalent natural or manmade stone. This was possibly Pierre’s first meeting with Cope. In April, Cope and Edgar Lawrence visited the Duke greenhouses in Somerville, NJ. That same month, H. Rodney Sharp met with John J. Earley to discuss the exposed aggregate finish that would be used on concrete throughout the Conservatory. Earley (1881–1945) is celebrated for his brushed-then-washed process used in Meridian Hill Park in Washington, DC, but the May 1920 Longwood contract specifies that the result is to equal that achieved in his 1919 Field House in that city’s East Potomac Park (with an outdoor portico of columns that are similar to Longwood’s except for Corinthian capitals) and in St. Mark’s Café at 913 15th Street NW. The maximum size of the exposed step-graded aggregate was to be no more than 3/8 inch, and the columns were to include entasis, a slight convex bulge in the shaft.

By May, Pierre had worked out with DuPont Engineering that they would serve as consultants, engineers,2 designers, and inspectors, using not only the engineering department but any other departments of the DuPont Company as deemed necessary. This was similar to an arrangement he had made with DuPont when building the Kennett Pike, although in that instance they also managed construction. Pierre would pay direct expenses including salaries for time spent, an additional 10% for overhead, plus bonuses as warranted. This, it was noted by DuPont’s chief engineer Harry Pierce, would save Longwood considerable money since there would be no percentage charged for actual construction, unlike the typical architect’s fee which could be 6% of building costs. Design work continued steadily and construction began in spring 1920. Hitchings & Company was awarded the contract for the greenhouse components; Pierre was probably unaware that they had been owned by Lord & Burnham since 1905. Among the biggest contracts for building the Orangery, Exhibition Hall, Peach Houses, and End Pavilions were: Belmont Iron Works: (structural steel)

$73,259

Hitchings & Company: (greenhouse components)

$197,416

Wm. H. Jackson Company: (bronze windows and doors)

$255,010

John J. Earley: (concrete aggregate finish)

$119,025

B. F. Shaw: (pipe and fittings)

$93,002

Total construction costs from 1919 to 1921 were $1.22 million for the Orangery, Exhibition Hall, Peach Houses, and End Pavilions; $213,000 for the Growing Group; $93,000 for the Reception Suite; and $310,000 for the Service Building with its Boiler Room, Potting Shed, and Dormitory. The total initial cost of the complex, less plants and furnishings, was thus at least $1,836,000, although the total varies depending on which summary sheet is consulted. Of this, DuPont Engineering was paid at least $50,000 and Schoenijahn $18,865 (plus his salary while with Harper). The total excludes demolition of old structures, massive regrading, building the Construction (now Facilities) Department complex, and creating an off-site water wheel pumping station three miles away.3 The total in today’s dollars, more than $27 million, may seem like a bargain, but labor then was extraordinarily cheap. Most men in the Construction Division were paid 30 cents an hour (about $4.44 today), and Pierre did not want to undercut local builders by overpaying. So many extra hands were needed that a labor camp was built 2.5 miles away in Mendenhall by the train station. It had dormitory sheds and a commissary with a cook, but conditions were less than ideal. Typically, 50 to 80 men were housed there, but the labor force could swell to 250 or more when the concrete formwork was being assembled. A Longwood ad for skilled carpenters in the Wilmington paper promised $8 a day. Workers, often Italian, came from Philadelphia and initially were

paid in cash—employee Knowles “Bus” Bowen recalled serving as a reluctant guard following the cash car in a second vehicle and armed with a gun! Planting the Conservatory was a huge effort that benefited from Pierre’s travels. On his 1913 European trip, Pierre visited Kew and made notes about amaryllis, baby’s tears, bouvardias, camellias, cyclamens, nepenthes, and orchids. He was impressed on that trip by the February landscape in the south of France, writing home about violets, narcissi, roses, acacias, pansies, daisies, anemones, cyclamens, and cinerarias blooming outdoors and in the hotels. This Mediterranean mix would form a major component of Longwood’s indoor displays. In 1914, he handwrote a list of 578 flowering plants of 11 different genera already growing in Longwood’s 1912 greenhouse, from allamandas and camellias to genistas and poinsettias. During their 1917 trip to California, Pierre and Alice visited a nursery and a camellia florist in Santa Barbara, then several nurseries in Pasadena where he bought at least 16 “rare” (for Pennsylvania) plants. He procured 312 hibiscus cuttings from the U.S. Experimental Station in Honolulu during their 1920 trip there, and they visited a pineapple field. On the way home, they did major plant shopping at the City and Kentia Nurseries, owned by Verhelle Brothers at 1420 State Street in Santa Barbara. Pierre ordered 829 large and small plants for the new Conservatory, including 40 citrus trees at $10 each; 200 Ficus repens (creeping fig, for the walls and columns); 36 acacias at $1.50; jasmine; oleander; bougainvillea; two coastal redwoods and two giant sequoias at $2.50; pittosporum; 10 Italian

Above: Orangery, southwest corner, showing the Earley concrete aggregate finish, 1920. The columns recall the Tuscan order, developed by the ancient Romans with minimal ornamentation and a slight bulge in the center.

Opposite: DuPont Engineering rapidly produced elegant and accurate blueprints, such as this section through the Exhibition Hall (left) and Orangery (right), looking east, 1920.

Below: The Boiler Room extends out the north side of the Service Building, 1920s. Photo by Charles Briggs.

Left: The concrete colonnade in East Potomac Park, Washington, DC, with an aggregate finish by concrete artist John J. Earley (above).

The Conservatory Under Construction 1919–1920

Right: A 180-foot tower steadied by numerous guy-wires channeled concrete wherever needed via two long arms, 1920. When the Orangery was rebuilt in 1995, it was determined that some of the concrete mix was poorly consolidated due to aggregate separation during its travel down the supply tubes, so the top 10 feet of some interior columns were repoured.

Above: Aerial view of the Orangery foundations and tunnels, 1920. Much of the excavation had to be dug by hand because of the small spaces. The front door will be at upper left center.

Above: Once it was decided that oil was less expensive than coal, a 300,000-gallon underground fuel tank west of the Growing Group was dug beginning in September 1919, the floor poured in November, the walls formed in a continuous 36-hour pour by December, followed by pouring the interior support columns and roof. Completion was delayed until spring 1920 because of residual ice and snow. By 2020 the tank was no longer used and was filled in.

Left: Orangery interior, 1920.

Right: The four Heine boilers ($24,400) under construction in the Service Building, before adding the protective front.

Below: Lower Reception Suite construction, looking east, 1920. The future Main Fountain Garden will be to the right.

Above: Steel framework for the End Pavilion, west Fruit House, and Orangery,1920.

Left: Exhibition Hall interior, 1920.

cypress at $2; 50 Monterey cypress at $1.25; agapanthus; two giant bamboo; blue plumbago; and more. H. Rodney Sharp inspected these plants, awaiting shipment, during a January 1921 trip to California. Sharp also evaluated suggestions for additional specimens to fill a railroad car, and the order was gradually expanded by correspondence to include six tree ferns at $18, 40 more citrus, and much else. The shipment left Santa Barbara by rail on April 27 and arrived at Mendenhall on May 13, 1921. Total plant cost was $1,958 (about $30,000 today). Pierre personally dictated endless orders to other suppliers, using botanical nomenclature and making discerning observations, suggesting that he was just as savvy in his own way as his horticultural cousin, Henry Francis du Pont of Winterthur fame, who could not grow nearly as many tender plants. Noteworthy among Pierre’s 1919–1921 trophies were at least 40 indica hybrid azaleas imported from Belgium for more than $16,000; more than 100 camellias from France and Belgium; and a celebrated but ultimately disappointing collection of amaryllis4 for $3,500. He made repeated attempts to get the USDA to allow him to import other sizeable azaleas, daphnes, acacias from Cannes, and other choice specimens after the 1919 restrictions (which permitted only small, bare-root plants), to no avail. But he bought a truck load of acacias for $500 in March 1921 after they were displayed at the International Flower Show in New York City—four from the Louise Constable estate in Mamaroneck, NY, and one from the Adolph Lewisohn estate in Ardsley, NY. He also purchased nine acacias from six to nine feet tall for $690 from the J. C. Armour estate in Lake Forest, IL. Such

opportunities arose because the plants had grown too large for the original owners. Crops from seed were no problem to produce, and head gardener William Mulliss grew at least three dozen types, from abutilons to violets. Plus all conceivable floral favorites from bulbs, cuttings, and purchased plants, and every kind of greenhouse vegetable, tropical fruit, and, especially, espaliered peaches and nectarines. The Conservatory was a horticultural Noah’s Ark. The total spent on indoor plants in 1921 was $12,370 (about $185,000 today). That same year, plants and labor for landscaping outdoors around the Conservatory cost $34,370 (about $513,000 today). The opening date of the Conservatory to the general public was in November 1921. A press release from Pierre’s Wilmington office in March 1921 announced that while weekdays were free, starting that spring (actually June 19) an admission fee of 25 cents (to be donated to local hospitals) would be charged to visit the grounds on Saturdays, the first and third Sundays, and holidays; the remaining Sundays were reserved for the du Ponts. The narrow public Doe Run Road (today Paulownia Drive) between Routes 1 and 926 divided the property, with the outdoor gardens and Open Air Theatre on the east side and the prominent new Conservatory clearly visible to the west. Newspaper articles from April to September noted that the building was not yet open to the public but that hundreds of visitors park along the road and stroll in the eastern outdoor flower gardens, especially on Sundays. At least one VIP group was allowed to visit the Conservatory in mid September, despite its “incompleted condition.” Finally, a clipping from November 18, 1921, said, “The magnificent new conservatory… is now

Left: John Harshberger, professor of botany at the University of Pennsylvania, described Longwood in a three-page article in The Garden Magazine, February 1921. He was especially impressed with the “large consignment of huge specimen Belgian Azaleas imported in tubs from Europe (just before Quarantine Order 37 was issued) and protected from the hot summer’s sun by an open lattice of Hemlock laths. Some of these Azaleas are six feet across and were full of bloom on May 23,

ready for inspection and open to visitors, many of whom have admired its beauties within the last few days.” The official opening was on Friday, November 24, 1921, the day after Thanksgiving, in a monumental party for 600 honoring three of Pierre and Alice’s debutante nieces. Popular dance music was provided by Smith’s Plaza Orchestra of New York, and there was a performance on the Exhibition Hall stage by the Metropolitan Opera Ballet dancers who, the reviewer noted, were transformed into fauns and dryads (tree nymphs) by the witchery of the surrounding tropical ferns. The 3,650-pipe Aeolian organ played impressively. But the real showstopper was the building itself. One newspaper noted the central structure was of “heroic proportions and its style resembles the Italian Renaissance. It is built of concrete covered with a loam mined from the bed of the Potomac River which gives it the appearance of highly-polished mottled marble.” The writer observed azaleas, bamboo, bananas, bay trees, cacti, calla lilies, carnations, chrysanthemums, ferns, gardenias, grapefruits, grapes, lemons, melons, oranges, peaches, poinsettias, roses, and sweet peas all growing. “The uttermost parts of the earth have sent their treasures to make Longwood conservatories a source of endless delight to the owners and one of the showplaces of the world,” exclaimed The Philadelphia Inquirer. Pierre du Pont was indeed pleased with the final product and with the contributions of the chief consultants. To engineer Edgar Lawrence, he noted in June 1921 “the very good service that you rendered in this project and to your careful work, which has been so essential to the success of the whole.” To architect J. Walter Cope, “One cannot survey

1919, when I visited the place.” This photo from the article was taken just five days after 51 cases of these imported plants were delivered to Longwood on five trucks and just one week before the embargo took effect on June 1,1919. The azaleas were from the estate of Baron M. Ghellinck de Walle. They were about 60 to 70 years old and had won the Queen’s Prize at the 1903 and 1908 Floralies in Ghent. For 15 years they had been disbudded before blooming to increase plant size.

the nearly completed work at Longwood without admiring the simplicity and beauty of the architecture. It may be a pleasure to you to know that your work has been highly commended and is very satisfactory to me. It is pleasant to realize that so much of the success is due to your effort.” Lawrence’s salary at DuPont was $421 a month and Cope’s was $306; Pierre then rewarded each with 70 shares of General Motors debenture stock. Even contractor John Earley was satisfied, thanking Pierre “for the opportunity to show the value of concrete as an architectural medium….” In 1934, Pierre still had high praise, recommending Cope for a federal government position as an associate architect: “Mr. Cope executed for me…a very fine piece of work in connection with a large conservatory at my country place …. This structure was quite unique, embodying features that were not elsewhere known. Mr. Cope’s problems were thoroughly worked out, so much so that practically no change has been made since the construction was completed about thirteen years ago. In fact, were I to wish a similar structure, I should duplicate the first effort almost without change.” Pierre never commented in the press about who helped design the Conservatory, but a clipping from an unnamed Philadelphia newspaper in the mid 1920s noted “the conception is original with Mr. du Pont and was executed in consultation with three well-known architects….” Presumably the writer was alluding to Vitale, Harper, and Cope, but that was about all the public recognition they ever received.

Above: The Orangery center walk with lilies and amaryllis and the Exhibition Hall filled with huge azaleas and bay

trees, early spring 1922, about four or five months after the memorable November opening.

A Century of Floral Sun Parlors: Part Five will appear in the next issue of Longwood Chimes.

Left: Unusual plant purchases in 1921 included four 17-foot-tall by nearly 12-foot-diameter bay laurel trees (Laurus nobilis) from Edward Stotesbury’s Whitemarsh Hall for $3,500 and 2 smaller bay trees from Joseph Widener’s Lynnewood Hall for $500. These were prominently displayed in the Exhibition Hall. One newspaper noted in 1921, “Bay trees as large as the average room in a city apartment guard the corners of the indoor theatre. They are as round as an orange, with glossy leaves of deep, rich green. These trees [originally from Lede, Belgium] crossed the ocean on the deck of a liner [before the 1919 embargo], too large to be crowded into the hold.” To more easily move them around, Longwood in 1922 bought a Cowan hand pallet truck for $600 with a 10,000-lb. capacity and a platform for each tree. Doors or windows must have been removed to get them inside.

Above: In 1921, $34,370 was spent on outdoor plants and labor for landscaping around the buildings, including for boxwood and the maple allée to the south. This 1927 view shows the 1921 layout before subsequent expansion, apart from the 1923 Music Room addition.

Longwood Chimes

No. 303 Summer 2021

Front and Back Cover An abstract view capturing the reflection of the Longwood Reimagined construction barrier graphics, as seen in the waterlily pools at Longwood. Photo by William Hill.

Inside Front Cover View of the West Conservatory architectural model, photographed in President and Chief Executive Officer Paul B. Redman’s office during the final days of the move from the horticulture building in preparation for Longwood Reimagined. Photo by Hank Davis. Inside Back Cover A collection of old horticulture staff locker keys found in the Potting Shed during moving preparations. Photo by Steve Fenton.

Footnotes: A Winning Solution 1. On November 18, Alice and Pierre were in New York shopping together, per her diary. Then she cryptically notes that she visited the Bronx, presumably with Pierre in a chauffeured car, before a late lunch. The most obvious reason would be to go to the New York Botanical Garden with its huge conservatory, since Pierre had renewed interest in greenhouses, but this is only conjecture. 2. One civil engineer on the project who was praised by his DuPont boss (in charge of reinforced concrete design) for having “designed the Orangerie, Peach Houses and Service Buildings” was Clayton Strausser (1892 –1956), although his name is not prominent in Pierre du Pont’s files. 3. One idea, later rejected in 1919, was to store this water in an underground swimming pool beneath the Conservatory Terrace. 4. The amaryllis were under the temporary care of horticulturist George Pring from 1917 to 1920 at the Missouri Botanical Garden. He showed them to William Mulliss in St. Louis in 1919. Pring’s son-in-law, Russell Seibert, became Longwood’s first director in 1955, and Pring helped plan Longwood’s Waterlily Display in 1956 –1957.

Editorial Board Marnie Conley Patricia Evans Steve Fenton Julie Landgrebe Sarah Masterton Katie Mobley Colvin Randall Judy Stevenson James S. Sutton

Contributors This Issue Longwood Staff and Volunteer Contributors Kristina Aguilar Plant Records Manager Kristie Lane Anderson Ecology Technician, Land Stewardship Hank Davis Volunteer Photographer Carol DeGuiseppi Volunteer Photographer William Hill Volunteer Photographer Lea Johnson, Ph.D. Associate Director, Land Stewardship and Ecology Becca Mathias Volunteer Photographer Maureen McCadden Digital Resource Manager Peter Zale, Ph.D. Associate Director, Conservation, Plant Breeding and Collections Other Contributors Lynn Schuessler Copyeditor Daniel Traub Photographer

Distribution Longwood Chimes is mailed to Longwood Gardens Staff, Pensioners, Volunteers, and Gardens Preferred and Premium Level Members, and is available electronically to all Longwood Gardens Members via longwoodgardens.org. Longwood Chimes is produced twice annually by and for Longwood Gardens, Inc.

Contact As we went to print, every effort was made to ensure the accuracy of all information contained within this publication. Contact us at chimes@longwoodgardens.org. © 2021 Longwood Gardens. All rights reserved.

“Think of an art museum collecting Picassos and Monets … we’re doing that for landscape architecture and garden design.” —Paul B. Redman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Longwood Gardens, reflecting on our Longwood Reimagined project.

Longwood Gardens is the living legacy of Pierre S. du Pont, inspiring people through excellence in garden design, horticulture, education, and the arts.

Longwood Gardens P.O. Box 501 Kennett Square, PA 19348 longwoodgardens.org