Longwood Reimagined almost ready

Posted by Rich Schwartzman on October 23, 2024

It's been more than three years since work started, but Longwood Reimagined is about top open to the public.

The $250 million Longwood Reimagined project is a month away from being finished and open to the public. The opening is scheduled for Nov. 22, which coincides with this year’s A Longwood Christmas.

Members of the media had the opportunity to take a press tour of the work leading up to next month’s official opening.

Paul Redman, president and CEO of Longwood Gardens tells members of the press that the new West Conservatory is the centerpiece of Longwood Reimagined.

In a nutshell, there are six new buildings, a renovation of others, and a rearranging of a few pathways. The bonsai and cascade gardens have been moved, and the lower level of the main conservatory was renovated to include a new restaurant and event space. But Longwood’s President and CEO Paul Redman said the biggest change and the centerpiece of the project is the construction of a new conservatory, the West Conservatory.

That new conservatory is a 32,000-square-foot glasshouse built where a parking lot had been. There are peaks rising from a pool making it seem the building is floating. Plantings were inspired by Mediterranean gardens. There are 65 plant species evoking Mediterranean climate zones.

But the exterior is just as important. Michael Manfredi, an architect with Weiss/Manfredi of New York, said the structure was designed with nature in mind.

The columns of the new West Conservatory branch out like tree trunks.

“When we’re in the conservatory, we’ll start to see this rather unusual development of columns. Marion [Weiss] and I are interested in nature teaching us how things are built,” Manfredi said.

He pointed to a group of trees and noted how the trunks branch out as they take shape.

“Typical architecture is a column with a post on it, so this is very much inspired by nature where, literally, the column becomes a beam,” he said.

He and Weiss designed the vertical columns for the new conservatory that branches the same way. In addition, the columns on the roof have gutters to recapture rainwater and store it underground cisterns to maintain water for the floating aspect of the interior.

The glass used is also designed with nature in mind. There are dots on the glass that birds can see so they don’t crash into the window panels.

The interior of the new West Conservatory is designed as a Mediterranean garden.

Landscape architect Christine Frederickson, of Reed Hilderbrand, spoke more on the garden, and interior of the West Conservatory.

“The garden is conceived as a series of floating planes that step down… a series of shallow step planes that descend into the pools,” she said.

Redman added that the precedent that Weiss/Manfredi brought to Longwood was the great cathedrals of Europe.

“We wanted that type of aspirational experience,” Redman said.

The press kit for the tour included the comment: “The West Conservatory is a living, breathing building which tunes the interior climate through a unique combination of automated roof and wall vents, active shades, and earth ducts. Rainwater is collected from the roof and stored for reuse in the water features. Together, these systems sustain the vitality of the garden.”

Work crews are putting the final touches on most of the buildings, but not everything will be ready on Nov. 22. Redman said the waterlily garden will not be finished until the end of the year and will open to the public in the spring.

The project was announced in February of 2021 with work beginning a month later. But the idea had been percolating for several years before that, according to Longwood’s President and CEO Paul Redman.

“Here at Longwood, we have a culture of planning, something that we are deeply devoted to. So, we give a great deal of thought to anything we embark upon,” Redman said. “For us, this particular project began with our far-reaching and visionary comprehensive site master plan that we initially developed in 2010 and 2012. The purpose of this master plan was to capture ideas for how we would fulfill our mission on the property here at Longwood, far, far, into the future…We’ve been working that plan to get to this point.”

Again, Longwood Reimagined will open to the public on Nov. 22, along with A Longwood Christmas which runs through Jan. 12.

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.