The Science of Longwood Gardens

Longwood Gardens is what happens when botany, wealth, engineering, patience, architecture, and seasonal emotional manipulation are placed in the same room and told to "make something tasteful." Most gardens are places where plants grow. Longwood is a place where plants are produced, choreographed, lit, labeled, irrigated, interpreted, conserved, and occasionally made to perform like they have union representation and a lighting designer named Claude. This is not a garden in the casual sense. This is not a few azaleas near a mailbox and a tomato plant being bullied by squirrels. Longwood is a living system of horticultural control, aesthetic ambition, historic preservation, water management, seasonal planning, visitor psychology, and glasshouse drama. It is a place where flowers are not merely arranged. They are deployed. They arrive in color waves. They occupy terraces. They stand beneath architecture. They flank walkways. They appear in such numbers that the average homeowner begins mentally apologizing to the three half-dead shrubs beside the garage.

Pagina's: 311, Paperback, Independently published