On the coldest day of the year, it feels warm strolling in the garden. Then you’d come to understand what previlaged truly means.
You have to imagine the other half of the Main Garden, the chimes from a 62-bell carillon in a 61-foot-tall stone Chimes Tower, the Open Air Theatre, the Italian Water Garden, the Flower Garden, Treehouses, and even a giant Chinese Dawn Redwood, a tree thought to be extinct until 1940s. And of course, the numerous hydraulic feats, perhaps the most extravagant defining feature in Longwood. The water fountain in front of the Conservatory boasts “10,000 gallons a minute shot as high as 130 feet and illuminated in every imaginable color.” Pierre was inspired by his traveling across the world, particularly in Italy and France, but he brought the designs up to larger scales.
The Conservatory is extravagant too. Today Longwood also serves a purpose in public horticulture education.A couple of arrangements in the Conservatory do strike a sense of wonder.
I like the meadow (added by the Foundation in 2014). It makes you want to run.
