Project Description

Longwood Reimagined: A New Garden Experience expands the public spaces across the renowned central grounds and connects 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, 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 Burke Marx's Cascade Garden, is relocated to an all-new, 3,800-square-foot glasshouse. A new outdoor Bonsai Courtyard, built alongside the West Conservatory, exhibits the largest collection 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.

Selected Recognition

Chicago Athenaeum International Architecture Award and The PLAN Culture Award

Featured in Architectural Record, Architect’s Newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest, The Philadelphia Inquirer, American Public Gardens Association, and others.

Photography © WEISS/MANFREDI

Role

Technical Coordinator for the Lower Reception Suite, Lily Court Canopy, and Conservatory facades.