Longwood Gardens | Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, USA | 2023
Architects: Weiss/Manfredi
Design Team: Marion Weiss, Michael A. Manfredi, Todd Hoehn, Patrick Armacost (Principal, Masterplan), Joseph Vessell, Andrew Ruggles, Justin Kwok (Senior Project Architects). Project Team: Eileen Witte, Sergio Saucedo, Tomoko Akiba, Heather McArthur, Jackie Krasnokutskaya, Hyon Woo Scott Chung, Don David, Kerry O’Connor, Daniel Martinez, Kim Steiner, Michael Steiner, Mike Harshman, Andreas Hausler, Thomas Baker, Matthew G. Ferraro, and Dongxiao Cheng
Additional Creditis
Preservation Consultants: John Milner Architects
Landscape Architects: Reed Hilderbrand LLC.
Client: Paul Redman Longwood Committee
General Contractor: Bancroft Construction Company
Client: Paul Redman Longwood Committee
Renderings Courtesy of the Architects
Longwood Reimagined: A New Garden Experience will expand the public spaces across the renowned central grounds and connect them from east to west, offering a newly unified but continually varied journey from lush formal gardens to views over the open meadows of Pennsylvania's Brandywine Valley.
The project originates from a master plan developed in 2010 by West 8 Urban Design & Landscape Architecture with Weiss/Manfredi. Longwood has continued working with Weiss/Manfredi as lead designer, in collaboration with Reed Hilderbrand, on Longwood Reimagined, which continues the institution's distinguished history of commissioning and collecting outstanding garden designs and glasshouses.
The centerpiece and largest single element of Longwood Reimagined is the creation of a new 32,000-square-foot glasshouse, designed by Weiss/Manfredi, with gardens and pools designed by Reed Hilderbrand. Renowned Brazilian landscape architect Robert Burle Marx's Cascade Garden will be relocated to an all-new, 3,800-square-foot glasshouse. A new outdoor Bonsai Courtyard, built alongside the West Conservatory, will exhibit one of the most outstanding collections of bonsai in the country.
A new public restaurant and private event space with a series of vaults reveals the spectacular fountain displays. Above the restaurant and event space, the landscaping of a new South Terrace and South Walk provides a shady promenade extending along the existing and new conservatories to a new West Terrace.
Longwood Reimagined continues the institution's distinguished history of commissioning outstanding garden designs, resulting in a sweeping yet deeply sensitive transformation in the most ambitious revitalization in a century of America's greatest center for horticultural display.
