February 18, 2021 - ChaddsFordLive.com

Re-imaginings planned for Longwood

reimagined3 — A new West Conservatory is planned for Longwood Gardens as part of its re-imagining.(Courtesy of WEISS/MANFREDI and Reed Hilderbrand)

Changes are instore for Longwood Gardens. It’s called Longwood Reimagined: A new garden experience. The project has been announced on the botanical garden’s website.

In a video, Longwood Director Paul Redman said Longwood is doing for landscape architecture and landscape design what art museums do for art — collect.

“That’s exactly what Pierre DuPont was doing from the moment he began and visioning Longwood,” Redman said.

The reimagining calls for an expansion of the conservatory and the grounds surrounding it. It will blend the historic and the visionary across 17 acres. The gardens will remain open during the work.

Longwood’s Cascade Garden will get a new home of its own when the project is completed. (Courtesy photo)

“It’s a massive project and the most complicated project that we have ever embarked upon,” Redman said in the video. We’re continuing our exploration of defining what a great garden means and is in the 21st century. It will be a new garden experience like none other.”

The centerpiece of the project is a new 32,000 square foot West Conservatory that will have a “close relationship with water and seamlessly integrate the old and the new” with Mediterranean-inspired islands installed with cypress and olive trees.

The cascade garden will be relocated and reconstructed in a structure of its own. There will also be a new Bonsai Courtyard that will frame a renewed Waterlily Court. Also planned are new landscapes, restaurants, and event spaces, as well as a refurbished and expanded administration building.

But what excites Redman the most, he said, is a new Crystal Palace, part of the new 32,000 square foot West Conservatory. Architect Michael Manfredi said that’s the size of a football field that will appear to float on a pool of water.

Manfredi’s partner, Marion Weiss, said, “Our hope is that visitors can leave their world behind for a moment and that it was transporting them to a place they had never imagined. And that’s what a garden can do.”

Longwood will remain open during construction. The project is anticipated to be complete in 2024.

To see the full video and learn more, go to Longwood’s website.

About Rich Schwartzman

Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.

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Weather closes ChesCo government

Along the Ford

Due to the inclement weather, Chester County Government offices, facilities, and courts are closed today, Thursday, Feb. 18. While county government and court buildings will be closed for public services during this time, many county programs and services continue, with staff working remotely as able. If you have a need to access county services, we encourage you to call or e-mail the department which provides

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From Christmas lights to protein bars

Business

Copy of Copy of Copy of Copy of Copy of FEATURES — From Christmas lights to protein bars

When Brent Schweitzer lived with his parents on Joshua Way in Pennsbury Township, he took pride in the elaborate Christmas displays he created. Now his creative energies have moved into a more entrepreneurial direction. He is now making protein bars.

Schweitzer, now 32 and a mechanical engineer, calls his product Outclass Nutrition Protein Bars. The bars are organic certified and non-GMO, with 18 grams of grass-fed whey protein, he said.

They come in three flavors — chocolate peanut butter, cashew raisin, and chocolate almond, and only have six ingredients: whey, cacao, coconut oil, tapioca fiber, and clover honey. The flavor determines the sixth ingredient. The only ingredient that can’t be classified as organic, he said, is the whey.

Schweitzer said the bars are gluten-free and low sodium.

But how did a 32-year-old mechanical engineer who likes Christmas lights get involved in creating protein bars?

“I was an overweight kid. I lost some weight but thought there had to be a way to keep the weight off. I later started lifting weights and eating protein bars, but they made me sick,” he said. “I came to the conclusion that most of them were junk.”

So, Schweitzer decided to do something about that. He was still living with his parents at the time and went to work in his mom’s kitchen, tinkering with ingredients, looking into those that were organic. And after trying this and that, he came up with something he thought other people might like.

He eventually found a manufacturer in California that would make the bars based on his recipe. Then came packaging and design. What’s left now is to get the project off the ground. That’s where the project stands now, and this phase starts with Kickstarter.

The goal is to raise $7,000 in 30 days beginning Tuesday, Feb. 23, when the Kickstarter campaign launches. People can go to the site to order the bars. It would cost $7 for three bars. If the goal isn’t reached in those 30 days, people who ordered would not have their credit cards charged, he said.

If he makes the $7,000 goal, the product will ship in seven to 10 weeks. Once the product catches on, Schweitzer said bars would eventually ship in about a week. Also, Kickstarter would move the product to a higher level of visibility and, Schweitzer hopes, that would translate into more sales. In time, he would like to see Outclass Nutrition Protein Bars on store shelves.

“It took me four years to get the bars where I want them to be…Now, it’s all or nothing. If I don’t make the goal, it’s back to the drawing board,” he said.

To see what he does with Christmas lights, see the 2013 story.

About Rich Schwartzman

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Around Town Feb. 18

Along the Ford

• Local author and historian Gene Pisasale has a new book out, “Forgotten Founding Fathers: Pennsylvania and Delaware in the American Revolution.” According to Pisasale, the book focuses on 10 of the Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

• The Foundation of the Delaware County Chamber of Commerce is accepting applications for its virtual professional development program, Leadership Delaware County – Developing Resilient Leaders. This six-week session explores how our bodies and minds respond to stress and how this impacts our behaviors and emotions. Learn to identify personal challenges and then practice with multiple techniques to address our stressors, and how to use these same techniques in the workplace. The application is available online at www.delcochamber.org/ldc2021 and the submission deadline is Monday, Feb. 22. Program tuition is $300.

• While COVID-19 is preventing the Chester County Community Foundation from holding events in person, the organization has reinvented its annual Sweet Charity event as Food for Thought: Sweet Charity. On March 2, “thought leaders” Wendy Gaynor, director of Food Security at the Chester County Food Bank, and Jodi Gauker, executive director of Lundale Farm, will speak on food security. On March 16, Terry Brett, CEO of Kimberton Whole Foods, Pete Flynn, owner of Pete’s Produce, and Emily Kovach, editor-in-chief of PA Eats, will speak on growing and sourcing local food. The public is encouraged to purchase a Sweet Charity Golden Ticket. Tickets can be exchanged for four gourmet desserts to savor at home from Carlino’s Market in West Chester. Ticket sales are strongly encouraged by March 18. Guests can visit with their Golden Ticket from March 25 through 27. Zoom events will be held Tuesday, March 2, March 16, and March 30 at noon. Registration is required.

• Delaware Wild Lands calls it a cure for cabin fever. DWL is planning a two-mile hike around the Sharp Farm in Middletown, Del., from 9-11 a.m. on Saturday, March 6. A rain date is planned for March 13. Those interested in taking part have until March 4 to RSVP by contacting DWL with an email to hsmall@dewildlands.org or by phoning 302-378-2736.

About CFLive Staff

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Musings: An undrained swamp

Opinion

The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump is over. His bid for a second term in 2020 is over. He didn’t win the election, and he didn’t drain the swamp as promised, but he was right about one thing. Mr. Trump — after spending four years Tweeting with the emotional maturity of a 14-year-old Valley Girl — told the truth. But it was grossly misapplied.

The former president said the election was rigged. He was correct, but not because he lost. The 2020 election was rigged the same way others have been rigged for decades.

Democrats and Republicans together rig the presidential election to ensure only their candidates have a chance to win. It doesn’t matter that there are other candidates on the ballots in all 50 states. They do this by using the Commission on Presidential Debates.

That commission is bipartisan. What does that mean? It means that Democrats and Republicans control the commission and make insufferable rules for candidates from other parties to get into the debates, regardless of how many state ballots on which those other candidates appear. For the past three presidential elections, Libertarian and Green party candidates have been on enough state ballots to have a mathematical chance of winning the 276 electoral votes to become president.

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson was on the ballot in 47 states in 2012 and on all 50 state ballots in 2016. Jo Jorgensen, the LP candidate in 2020, was also on all 50 ballots in 2020. But they weren’t allowed into the debates. Why? Because the commission’s rule is that a candidate must score at least 15 percent on five different polls, polls that the commission chooses. But the commission only uses polls that exclude candidates that aren’t Republican and Democrat. This effectively prevents the vast majority of voters from knowing about other possible choices, positions other than what the two old, too old parties say.

Change is not possible while those two old parties continue their monopolistic control of the government, something that’s been growing for 160 years. What has happened since then? The country is weakening from within.

Fiscally unprincipled Democrats did not put the country into an almost $28 trillion debt without help from Republicans. Republicans did not put us onto the road of never-ending, immoral, and unconstitutional wars without Democrats giving a thumbs up and a willingness to foot the bill. Let’s not forget domestic spying, indefinite detention without charges that both parties said was OK, and a Democratic Party president who ordered the U.S. military to kill an American citizen with no charges brought, no Miranda warnings, no due process whatsoever. And the Republicans went right along with that absolute violation of the U.S. Constitution.

And then came COVID. Governors decreed who may work and who may not. Governors decided to put sick people into nursing homes, causing many more deaths from the virus than would have occurred otherwise.

Such is the swamp. Those two parties are the swamp. Their politicians thrive in the swamp. Marie Antoinette supposedly said of the people, “Let them eat cake.” Americans today are forced to drink swamp water. That swamp will never be drained as long as Republicans and Democrats guard the drain plug.

About Rich Schwartzman

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