The opening graph contained these words:
“This may be the strangest garden in America, at once the darkest and most joyous, unlike any other place I’ve been.”
Now there’s an irresistible beginning.
For years, we have subscribed to the Smithsonian. By doing so, we not only support magazine journalism but also an important nonprofit, so win-win there – and the content is often fascinating.
This particular story appears in this month’s issue (March 2023) and it’s called An Abandoned, Industrial Ruin Bursts With New Life in Delaware. It gives the history and the long-abandoned Crowninshield Gardens in Wilmington, created by Louise du Pont and her husband Francis B. “Frank” Crowninshield in the 1920s. The gardens started to fall into disrepair in 1958, when Louise died and in the decades that followed became pretty much buried under weeds and debris.
There’s now an effort by the nearby Hagley Museum to restore the gardens, with the help of landscape architect Nelson Byrd Woltz and others. These gardens were apparently a strange mixture of industrial remains from a horribly dangerous powder mill that had been on the site – and had killed 228 people with its accidental explosions – and more traditional landscape elements like classical sculptures and architectural remnants, as well as thousands of flowers, shrubs and trees.
Amazingly, a year or so after thickets of nettles and vines were moved in 2018, spring blooms like Erythronium, Mertensia and species tulips emerged by the thousands after not having bloomed for decades.
It’s not clear if this bizarre landscape, built on a factory of death, will ever be publicly viewable. However, the Cultural Landscape Foundation is involved, which is a good sign.
Of course, these almost completely forgotten gardens are very close to another, much more famous, showplace associated with the DuPont family, Longwood.
Gardens don’t preserve easily – unlike structures, which can retain much of their character for decades. I know there are gardens made by well-known landscape architects within a few hours drive of my house that have long since disappeared.
Overgrown gardens surrounded by ruins certainly have a romantic appeal – but even that takes a certain amount of upkeep. I’d love to visit Crowninshield. But from the sound of it, it’s still too dangerous.
Image courtesy of Charles Birnbaum, Cultural Landscape Foundation.
In the wooded part of my property, Liriope and perwinkle covered most of the understory. I finally paid someone to remove it, or as much as they could. This year I am finding Trillium, reseeded from closer to the house. I also have more spring bulbs blooming than ever before. Guess they were waiting for clearance to emerge.
Eerily cool. On a much smaller scale we visited a garden in a town near Cleveland. A man had lovingly created it and maintained it all alone, had all kinds of rare trees. Volunteers and one lone paid Gardner struggled to keep a semblance of order
It had been offered to the city upon his death. To which the city replied sure! But we are going to bulldoze it all and put in a fire station and name it after you. So they kept it and it slowly goes back to the wild.
How sad that the garden is going to seed, so to speak. But it would be even sadder to see it razed and a fire station put in its place.
Tibs, you must be referring to Gardenview Horticultural Park, right?
I hope it will open to the public — I know I’d love to see it. The photo reminds me of Sir George Sitwell’s book, On the Making of Gardens, in which he waxes eloquently on the beauty of ruins. Well worth a read if you haven’t read it already.
Such places beautifully juxtapose the impermanence of the intentional with the inevitability of the random. Thanks for the lesson in humility and the appreciation of decay.
Paul Orpello gave a presentation at the Perennial Plant Conference last fall about Crowninshield and it was astonishing to see his slides of the garden. It wasn’t just a variety of bulbs that returned, but also Iris siberica and even peonies! Absolutely stunning.
I read that Smithsonian just last night…. enthralling. Lost gardens are the stuff of dreams.
Our land here in Maine was planted to red pine in the early 1960’s. Before that there had been fields around the house. We had part of it selectively cut around 1998. The next spring I looked out toward the woods and saw yellow and thought someone had thoughtlessly dropped trash there. I charged out to find it was daffodils blooming because they finally had enough light. There were daylilies too. It’s amazing the resilience of those bulbs and rhizomes. There are also squill on the north side of the house that come up every year….this is our 41st year in this house and I didn’t plant them. They humble me. I may not have ruins or Greek sculpture but I have 50 year old squill!
Such places beautifully juxtapose the impermanence of the intentional with the inevitability of the random. Thanks for the lesson in humility and the appreciation of decay.