Spring at Longwood

Spring at Longwood starts early on the thousand acres of woods, fountains, and various

gardens.  Above is an Icelandic Poppy, one of the earliest flowers to appear, sometimes

through the snow.  It has a tall, slender stem, almost like a wire.  The flower
is about 6 x 8 inches in size.

Rose colored Icelandic Poppy.  They come in every color, and the buds look like poppies.

Blue Columbine is a beautiful and delicate flower, which appears early in the spring

and lasts much of the summer.  Wild columbine has much smaller flowers, but these

blue ones are almost five inches across.

Peach-orange Icelandic Poppy.  These were growing in pots in the garden

Yellow Columbine

The sign said these were Violas, but I think I would call them Pansies.

The parking lot was filled with patches of daffodils in great profusion.

Daffodils

The front of the Entrance Building has beds filled with daffodils and baskets of

Trailing Yellow Nemesia.  Until recently, Nemesia always stood firm and upright, but

they have now developed a variety which droops and trails and is perfect for hanging baskets.

Magnolia trees were blooming all over the gardens and S.E. Pennsylvania.

This is a Chinese Magnolia, which is one of the first to bloom.

Blossoms on the magnolia tree.  Notice that they are very different, and much fuller,

than the blossoms on the usual American Saucer Magnolia.

Forsythia bushes, in brilliant yellow, were found all over the gardens and all along the 

highways.  Every house wants to have a hedge of forsythia.

Hedge of brilliant yellow forsythia.

Weeping Cherry trees could be seen all over, in both pink and white.  Weeping Cherry

Trees flower much earlier than regular Flowering Cherry trees.

Pink Weeping Cherry tree

Weeping White Cherry Tree.  Some of them are small and decorative like this one,

and others are very large.

White Weeping Cherry Tree

Sunken Garden with fountain.  You can see one of the magnolia trees in the background.

The fountain is surrounded by Dwarf Irises, Crocuses, and Daffodils.

Dwarf White Iris.  They stand about five inches high.

Cluster of Dwarf White Iris

Naturalized Daffodils against a brick wall.

Mix of naturalized Daffodils.

Giant Cream Daffodils with Yellow Throats

White Daffodils with Yellow Throats / Trumpets

Purple and White Crocus.  They are very small and very delicate and last only a

short time.  But they are very beautiful for those few days.

A bunch of Lavender and White Crocus

Four Lavender Crocus

A bunch of Crocus

Entire hillsides and fields looked like this in the morning, a blue carpet.

This is a field of blue in Longwood Gardens with a giant Pink Weeping Cherry Tree in the

center, just coming into bloom.  The tree is nearly 100 years old and stands 60 feet high.

The blue carpet is made up of millions of small blue flowers.

A few miles down the road is Winterthur, the estate of another Dupont - Henry Francis.

The field above is at Winterthur.

The blue field is made up primarily of millions of Glory-of-the-Snow flowers,
or Chiodoxia.  They come in various shades of blue from very deep to very pale.
Henry Francis had several million planted back in 1920 and they continue to bloom and
multiply and spread and cover whole hills and fields now.

Some Glory-pf-the-Snow flowers / Chiodoxia

The rest of the blue is provided by these little blue Siberian Squill flowers.

They also come in various shades of blue; these are pale blue.  Siberian Squill.

Siberian Squill also comes in white, as  above.

One of the great surprises and delights of this trip for me was to discover this bush, the

Korean Rhododendron.    There were some on a hillside at Longwood, but hundreds in

the gardens at Winterthur.  These bright pink or magenta bushes are the first

rhododendrons to bloom each year, much earlier than other varieties.

Korean Rhododendron.  Winterthur has a whole hillside devoted to these magnificent

bushes, and then contrasting bushes of Yellow Witchhazel, as below.

Yellow Witchhazel and Pink Korean Rododendrons

Winterthur also has a large collection of different kinds of magnolia trees.  This is a

Saucer Magnolia.  Notice the branches of the very tall tree in the background.  That is a

Dawn Redwood and stands 98 feet high, second tallest tree in Winterthur.  It was planted

by Henry Francis Dupont a century ago as he developed his gardens.

This is the largest Magnolia Tree in the world, standing 80 feet tall. My timing was just
right; the guide said that two days earlier, you still saw only branches and a skeleton.
And then two warm days made the whole tree pop, and while I was there, it looked like
a mountain covered with white snow.  Incredible.

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More to come.

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