Volume 7, Number 4, 1998


An art-form garden

Using native plants, Gary Smith, an associate professor of plant and soil sciences, has developed a new "art-form" garden in Peirce's Woods, one of the oldest sections at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa. One goal of the five-year project, developed in cooperation with a Longwood team, was to inspire people to use native plants in their home landscapes. A tree canopy of old sugar maples and tulip poplars in the woodland progresses to sweeps of native azaleas, which Smith and Rick Darke, Longwood curator of plants, suggested should be used in more home gardens. The landscape artists carefully chose color combinations in their plantings, starting with blue phlox and white foamflower in the spring.

In the fall, near a stream, are orange Taxodium ascendens Prairie Sentinel set against the deep wine color of Viburnum nudum Winterthur leaves and dwarf summersweet Hummingbird.