At Longwood Gardens, a new meadow for the ages

in Kennett Square, Pa.

In 1906, the industrialist Pierre du Pont saved a private arboretum from destruction by buying it, but what began as an act of preservation soon morphed into a quest for display and opulence.

First came a formal flower garden walk. After he and his wife, Alice, went on a grand tour of Italy, he constructed an open-air theater inspired by the Villa Gori in Siena. The conservatory followed and, in time, came to house a winter garden, an array of potted exotic plants and a ballroom with one of the worlds largest private pipe organs.

Two separate and grandiose Italianate fountain gardens followed, along with other outdoor displays, and the original 200 acres grew to around 1,000.

After du Ponts death in 1954, Longwood Gardens became and remains a popular public attraction. More than one million visitors a year arrive to savor an experience that includes outdoor summer concerts where polychromatic fountains dance to music, and the shows end with fireworks.

This summer, the director and trustees of this institution unveiled what may be the most radical garden of all: an enormous hilly meadow that turns Longwoods gaze to the landscape of the surrounding Brandywine Valley.

More than three miles of mown paths and boardwalk wind through and around an 86-acre field of grasses and wildflowers. Fresh and green when completed in June, the Meadow Garden is now tall and daubed with patches of color the butter yellow of sunflowers, the muddy violet of the joe-pye weed, the intense purple of the ironweed. The meadow is full of bees and butterflies, and goldfinches seem to dance above it.

There is something about the meadow that reaches deep; it is vital and still, nostalgic and bleak like the memories of childhood and of dreams. It has reduced some visitors to tears, said Tom Brightman, an ecologist in charge of its management. Its the influence of the plants, the wind, the sky, the sun, the moon. Theres something underlying there, in the pysche. Perhaps that is why visitors have been arriving in unanticipated numbers to savor it.

But forget the idea of self-sustaining nature. The creation of this meadow was years in the making. Its cultivation will be endless.

The lead designer, landscape architect Jonathan Alderson, has imbued the experience with obvious cues that this is a place where wilderness was crafted. The grass paths may seem simply there, but they were laid out carefully to lead you through a journey where vistas would shift into focus and stop you in your tracks. Its central loop ensures a different way back. A peripheral path between the meadow and its woodland border offers orchestrated views and takes you over three bridges and past four pavilions.

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At Longwood Gardens, a new meadow for the ages