Marjorie’s Summer Visit to Longwood Gardens

In early August, Marjorie handed me a couple CD’s of photos she had taken at the end of July when she visited Longwood. Here it is mid-October and yours truly is just getting around to putting up a post! Apologies!

I believe our Marjorie is a supporter of the garden through membership and we are lucky that she goes there regularly with camera in hand. We get to see through her eyes, the changing botanical panorama indoors and out. She will often take a snapshot of the name placards so that we too can know the name of a particular plant, which is most helpful.

In a note, she wrote : “Last weekend I visited Longwood Gardens. I have been on many occasions but this time I found that the Water Lily Garden was superb. So many of our garden club members, I am sure, would love to see these gardens. It’s about 2 hours from Westminster…

Here are a selection of the photos:

Outdoor containers:

Here are the waterlily ponds. When I have been to Longwood, I have either been too early or too late for this display. The giant lily pads are something else! The variegated leaves are quite interesting. Apparently there are night blooming waterliles too–the foliage is often darker. Longwood keeps the algae problem under control by using just enough of a darkening dye to slow its growth while not harming the lilies. I note cannas, papyrus, mallows and colocasia.

Indoors : I don’t have names for all the plants but Longwood has a search you can use to locate what is in bloom (or use) where and when.

Outdoors on walkabout: