Longwood Gardens ready to unveil its biggest project in a century

After three years of construction, Longwood Gardens is set to open its $250 million "Longwood Reimagined" conservatory expansion next Friday, Nov. 22.

The massive 17-acre project includes a new water-adorned 32,000-square-foot glasshouse – nearly the size of a football field – plus a new restaurant, a relocated historic Cascade Garden, and a new, larger Bonsai Court.

Already one of the world's biggest and most respected public gardens, the one-time Chester County estate of Pierre S. du Pont covers 1,100 acres, attracts 1.6 million visitors annually, and features more than two dozen theme gardens, a huge fountain garden that produces lighted shows set to music, and acres of woodlands and meadows.

This latest improvement project – coming on the heels of a $90 million renovation to Longwood's flagship five-acre Main Fountain Garden – focused on the Gardens' conservatory complex toward the back left of the property.

It debuts along with the Gardens' 2024 "A Longwood Christmas" show that features special holiday displays, fountain shows, and more than half a million lights strung across hundreds of acres.

Longwood Reimagined will be celebrated with two weeks of opening festivities, including member-only preview days and special events.

Holiday-season adult tickets are $42 ($23 for ages 5-18), and advance purchase with timed entry is required. More information is posted on Longwood's ticketing site .

A Longwood Christmas runs through Jan. 12.

The Longwood Reimagined project was designed by the award-winning firms of Weiss/Manfredi of New York City and Reed Hilderbrand of Cambridge, Mass., and New Haven, Conn. Bancroft Construction of Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland was the construction contractor.

Longwood President and CEO Paul Redman said the project features the latest conservatory innovations and sustainability practices and will give visitors a "transformational journey."

"With new spaces to explore and dynamic landscapes that evolve with the seasons," Redman said, "Longwood Reimagined ensures that every visit will offer a fresh, immersive experience."

The centerpiece of the project is the new glasshouse that contains an all-new Mediterranean Garden featuring planted islands, pools, canals, and fountains.

Surrounded by water, the glasshouse appears to float in the landscape.

Inside, the gardens and plants come from six Mediterranean ecozones – the Mediterranean Basin, South Africa's cape, coastal California, central Chile, and southwestern and south Australia.

Plants include agaves, aloes, ceanothus, evergreen pincushion shrubs, cypress, bay laurel, acacia, numerous palms, and some unusual specimens, such as egg-and-bacon plants (so called for their two-toned yellow and red-brown flowers) and the aromatic with its fragrant purple flowers.

The Mediterranean gardens are laid out over three planted islands set on a sheet of water.

What's underneath it all is even more innovative.

With the goal of sustainability, the new Mediterranean glasshouse has 128 geothermal wells drilled 315 feet deep into the ground to provide passive heating and cooling.

Ventilation comes from 10 buried ducts 300 feet long each that draw in fresh air and then warm or cool it (depending on season) via the earth.

To make way for the new construction, Longwood's historic Cascade Garden – designed by renowned Brazilian landscape architect Robert Burle Marx – was completely relocated. Opened in 1992 in Longwood's Main Conservatory, this garden was uninstalled, moved to its own new 3,800-square-foot glasshouse, and meticulously put back together.

Longwood says it's the first time that a historic garden has been relocated whole.

The Cascade Garden is Marx's only surviving design in North America.

It features rock walls, cascading waterfalls, and clear pools in a tropical rainforest setting.

A second key renovation in the Reimagined project is the new Bonsai Courtyard.

This area now encompasses 12,500 square feet in an outdoor gallery housing Longwood's extensive bonsai collection. Some of the specimens are more than 110 years old.

Hornbeam hedges define the new space with charred-wood walls, cypress pedestals, and cast stone panels to display the potted specimens.

A third main element of the project is the new version of Longwood's fine-dining restaurant, 1906. This restaurant sits atop the Main Conservatory's retaining wall and looks out into the Main Fountain Garden.

Outside, a 500-foot-long flowering herb garden attracts pollinators.

Inside, some of the furnishings were built from wood harvested from fallen trees at Longwood by the Challenge Program, a nonprofit organization in Wilmington, Del.

The menu will feature fresh, seasonal ingredients – many of them coming from Longwood's own gardens.

Other new features include:

An allee of ginkgo trees with Lenten roses and Christmas ferns underplanted.

A revitalized Waterlily Court and Arcade.

A revamped Conservatory Outlook that gives visitors views from above into the Main Fountain Garden and its shows.

And an expanded Orchid House (already open) that exhibits 50 percent more orchids than before.