More Garden Pics

Some of the lights: the pictures don't do it justice

This garden was closed, but we could see a lot of it from the gate. It reminded me of chocolate cakes dusted with powdered sugar!

In the 'Silver' garden: the really tall cactus was called 'Mexican Fence Post,' and you can see the 'Old Man Cactus' on the bottom (there was also a similar, furry palm tree called the Old Man Palm Tree) The Christmas tree in there was very pretty, with Dusty Miller and sage interspersed through a blue spruce (?)

In the orchid room: its smelled very good in there!

Big Leaf Hydrangea looks like shooting stars; funny sign at the Children's Garden, Jeff posing with a flower in his 'hair' and I use that term loosely ;)

In the Children's Garden: the pelican fountain was my favorite; Jeff pretending to be trapped inside the tunnel

In the Children's Garden

A Christmas Tree for the wildlife: everything was edible! Not surprisingly, this tree was full of birds.

One end of the beautiful library: all of the book shelves had glass doors, and there was a hidden door to a powder room at the other end.

Longwood Gardens was built by Pierre Dupont who owned the Dupont company, and helped run General Motors. He was, by my highly scientific estimation, filthy stinkin' rich. He gave lots of money away to the community, and poured who knows how much cash into his Longwood estate. He was fascinated by both plants and water, and so he made sure he was surrounded by both...in large quantities! From what we heard, he designed a good deal of the water fountains himself. (They were closed while we were there) The Duponts loved to have people visit the gardens and set up a structure to enable to the gardens to go on in perpetuity. Its pretty amazing that a) someone had enough money to do something like this, and b) that he wanted to make sure it was always open to visitors. I look forward to seeing it again in the spring or summer.