Countdown to Lilytopia 2011

Bring your camera for stunning photographs

Towers of Lilies

In a few days, Longwood Gardens’ East Conservatory and Exhibition Hall will transform into the largest lily display in North America! For the second consecutive year, Longwood is partnering with Holland bulb breeders to showcase some of the most amazing cut lilies that you will ever see. Lilytopia begins this Friday, May 20, but the planning began a year ago. World renowned designer, Dorien van den Berg, created a breathtaking design that showcases over 11,000 cut lilies and—new this year—1,500 calla lilies.

Watch Dorien in action on the The Martha Stewart Show, sharing ideas for arranging calla lilies at home (don’t miss the last 30 seconds of the clip when Martha gives Longwood Gardens a shout-out!).

Dorien turned her design for Longwood over to our carpenters and sheet metal workers, and these gifted artists spent countless hours creating the wooden platforms and metal structures that will showcase the lilies on display in the Conservatory. See a photo album of last year’s display.

The lilies—some of the newest cultivars in the world—were grown by a number of different Holland growers, and the process of shipping the flowers from the greenhouses in Holland to the display at Longwood Gardens is following a carefully planned schedule.

Lilies being staged for packing and shipping - May 14

The lilies destined for the Lilytopia display were cut in the greenhouses on May 14 & 15, packaged in boxes, pre-inspected by the USDA, and then put on an airplane headed for the States. They will arrive at JFK airport on Monday, May 16, where they will first get checked by US Customs, and then put on a refrigerated truck headed to Longwood Gardens.

The 13,000 stems are scheduled to arrive at the Gardens early Tuesday morning, where a crew of Longwood employees and volunteers will be awaiting their arrival (caffeine in hand). The  lilies will be removed from their packaging and a new cut will be made on each stem to keep the flowers fresh. Then the stems will be put into tubs of water according to cultivar. From this point, the lilies will be transported directly to the Conservatory or put into a cooler until they are ready to be used.

Beautiful flowers and breathtaking fragrance

When the lilies are brought to the Conservatory, a large group of Longwood and Dutch florists will be ready to transform the lilies into a beautiful display.

In the East Conservatory, 17 massive, vase-like structures are being built in the flower beds to display lilies in a perfect form.

Around the Patio of Oranges, four “walls” of lilies will surround you with a mass of beautiful, fragrant blooms.

Several tall lily arches will make the perfect backdrop for photos, and some of the most interesting and unique cultivars will be showcased in individual glass vases.

This year, 12 towers of lilies, each nine feet tall, will be displayed on the Exhibition Hall floor in the Conservatory. These towers make a great addition to Lilytopia because they will allow you to walk right up to the lilies and take in the wonderful fragrance. For the photographers out there, the towers also provide a chance to get up close for stunning macro shots.

Around the Exhibition Hall, there will be even more individual vases of unusual lily cultivars so that you can deliberate with your family and friends about which are your favorites. And don’t miss the other addition to this year’s exhibit, a display of calla lilies that will greet you as you enter our new Green Wall corridor. Callas are one of my favorite flowers, so I am very excited to see the many different cultivars grown by the Holland breeders.

Vase-like structures overflowing with lilies

Lilytopia runs from May 20–30, 2011. Be sure to plan a visit during these 10 days so that you don’t miss seeing this amazing display. I promise that you will be amazed by the beauty and variety of these flowers. You will even be able to take a home a momento from Lilytopia when you visit our Special Events Pavilion. Bulb suppliers will have your favorite lily bulbs for sale so you can enjoy these beautiful flowers in your own garden.

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Notes from the Longwood Organ

Justin Hartz

Longwood Gardens is pleased to welcome guest blogger Justin Hartz to “Behind-The-Plants.” Justin made his recital debut at Longwood Gardens in 1989. He has played many programs for Longwood’s guests, and presented programs on the Longwood Aeolian for the Organ Historical Society’s national convention and for area chapters of the American Guild of Organists. His CD recording “Hartz and Flowers”, recorded at Longwood, has introduced many listeners to our historic instrument. A scene from his video “Midnight Pipes” featuring the Longwood organ and fountains may be seen on Youtube. Justin Hartz is a graduate of The Juilliard School and Westminster Choir College. He serves as Organist and Director of Music at Christ Episcopal Church, Riverton, New Jersey, and teaches piano and organ.

Close-up of Choir pipes with labels - This close-up of the wooden racks show the identifying labels that recreate the original Aeolian font.

One December afternoon, a young family wanders among the lily-scented Conservatory at Longwood Gardens. The children, dressed in bright Christmas sweaters, stroll along the path, stopping to smell the paperwhites and point to poinsettias in unusual shades. Suddenly the ground begins to shake, and the rumble of distant thunder is heard. But wait! There’s snow on the ground and the sun is still shining. Curious to find out the source of this new sound, they begin walking in the direction of the vibrations and find themselves in Longwood’s elegant Ballroom. There they discover the source of the sound: a white-bearded gentleman sits at the controls of a massive pipe organ console. The organist stops, turns around, and from behind from his handlebar moustache, says “Welcome to Longwood Gardens! My name is Justin Hartz, one of the organists, and I’m very happy to be here today to play for our holiday sing-alongs”

My name IS Justin Hartz, and playing the organ for Longwood’s visitors is one of my favorite things to do! Many people discover our 10,010 pipe organ by chance, just as I’ve described. Some folks come year after year to our organ sing-alongs, often bringing several generations of family members as part of a holiday tradition.

Then there are those who know about our wonderful Aeolian Organ and have heard it before, live, on CD, or on the internet. The great news is that the restoration of Longwood Garden’s pipe organ is nearly complete! All 10,010 pipes have been restored. When the restored organ debuts during Longwood’s Organ Fanfare Weekend, February 4–6, the organ will sound just like it did when it was brand new in 1930.

You can get a preview of the new organ on Longwood’s website, where you can listen to the sounds of the pipes, learn the history of the largest residence organ in the world, view pictures of the pipes, find out about upcoming organ concerts, learn about the extensive restoration, and more!

The Organ Console (used from 1959 to 2000) in the Organ Museum

The Current Organ Console in Longwood's Ballroom

Like everything else at Longwood, there is much going on “behind the scenes” before any guests hear a note of music! First, there is the organ itself. Pipe organs are often shrouded in mystique. Some are located in high lofts in dark cathedrals and castles. The motion picture industry often places an organ in a haunted house or subterranean dungeon (while the opening bars of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in d minor are played). Fortunately, even though Longwood’s pipes were hidden from view, visitors can now see them and their associated mechanisms through the glass walls of Longwood’s Organ Museum. Now it is easy comprehend the diversity of sizes and shapes of organ pipes—from the towering 32-foot pedal pipes to the tiniest string and mixture pipes.

East Pedal chamber with 372 pipes

As effortless as it looks, one can’t just sit down at a console the size of Longwood’s and just “play.” Lots of practice, preparation, and training is involved (Yes, Virginia, Santa’s Helper really did major in Organ at Juilliard)! The first thing I do—after learning the notes, of course—is to “register” the piece I’m going to play. Does the music require soft, medium, or loud sounds? Should this section sound majestic, like a Cathedral organ, or would it sound better with the light-hearted, throbbing tremolo of a Theater organ? Would this section sound best with a clarinet, a trumpet, or an oboe? Should the pedal rumble like an earthquake, or sound lightly like a bass violin? Strings, flutes, vox humana or all of the above?

Percussion Division of Longwood Organ - Glockenstern

Deciding which stops to play on the Longwood organ is like selecting colors for a painting. And like the rest of Longwood Gardens, the variety of sounds I can create with our organ are as varied as the wonderful color combinations our gardeners create with flowers.

Over this past holiday season, I’ve been preparing music for the re-dedication of Longwood’s organ. I hope you will join us as we celebrate the return of the organ on February 4–6. My contribution will be a recital of “Organ Music Inspired by Nature” on Saturday, February 5 at 3:00. I look forward to seeing you and your families then!

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How Did Our Garden Grow?

Before you read on I want you to do something: Step outside, close your eyes, and take a whiff. What do you smell? More accurately, where do you smell? Now do that with each place that you visit in the course of a day, week, or month. You just might be surprised to find that each place has a different olfactory essence that you come to associate with that specific location.

When I get off a plane in my native Los Angeles I can tell it’s LA because of the way it smells (car exhaust and sun-baked pavement seasoned with a hint of sea salt.). LA smells different from New York, which smells different from London, which smells different from Barcelona, which smells different from Philadelphia. To me, each place has a uniquely identifiable scent that provides a sense of where I am. This clearly identifiable feature of a geographic location was the concept behind the Student Exhibition Garden, “A Scents of Place.”

When my partner in design Shannon and I started discussing concepts for the garden during our Landscape Design course we knew our design had to conform to Longwood’s theme of Fragrance. Fragrant plants were a given, but we had to develop a theme of our own – a context within which to place the plants we chose.

Following the design guidelines that our instructor Dan Maffei taught us, we developed a concept drawing with one major and two minor focal points. We knew we wanted to use plants and materials that would provide a variety of textures and heights in the focal points, but hadn’t yet determined what those plants and materials would be. As we doodled, one of us commented that the drawings looked like the skyline of a city. And cities, as we’ve already determined, smell.

The concept drawing stage of our design

That was our “a-ha!” moment. We decided our design would be a cityscape of fragrant plants. With some help from Dan and lots of creative brainstorming, we finally landed on the title for our theme. That’s when the design process took a decidedly creative turn and the real fun began! What if we built our city with some new but mostly reclaimed, recycled, and used materials? What if we designated that our structures be made of metal to mimic the shiny reflections of glass on highrise buildings? What if some of them were in various stages of repair or decay, just as buildings and neighborhoods in most cities are found? And what if we added some whimsy by using aluminum trash cans as planted containers (if only all trash receptacles smelled so nice!)? We began referring to our focal points as “downtown” and “the ‘burbs.” We printed photos of city skylines for inspiration (reflective downtown skyscrapers, industrial centers with steam-belching chimneys, even a nuclear power plant) and began jotting down ideas for the plants we would use.

Our final design showing plan, elevation, and detail drawings of our metal arches

Taking off with the idea of elements in different stages of construction or decay, we designed a series of arches that are placed to frame views of our garden. One arch joins the main garden plot with a small sliver of ground on the other side of the existing path and serves as a formal entrance to the garden, conveying the message “you are entering a different place”. The next arch frames our main focal point but instead of being a complete arch, part of the top is missing. The third is simply a pair of uprights, waiting for the overhead piece to be put into place. All are draped in Mina lobata (Firecracker Vine) for its fiery color and season-long bloom and Ipomoea alba (Moonflower) for its heady evening scent.

Since the Student Exhibition Garden is meant to provide us with ‘real world’ experience in designing, constructing, and maintaining our gardens, we were responsible for procuring every plant and material called for our in our design. This presented quite a challenge; where were we going to find three arches like the ones we envisioned, not to mention some of the other pieces we wanted to shape our city? Enter the talent of Longwood’s craftsmen, specifically Dave in the metal shop, and Koa, one of the gardeners who trains the fabulous forms for Longwood’s Chrysanthemum Festival. We approached Dave with several sketches of our arches and asked if he could fabricate them. After a few discussions detailing the exact gage of rebar, criss-cross pattern on the uprights, and suggestions on how to make them more structurally stable, he began working. Next we asked Koa if we could borrow some of his unused mum forms and he graciously allowed us to ‘shop’ in the nursery storage barn. A few visits to the metal shop scrap heap provided some valuable finds, as well, fulfilling our goal of using reclaimed, recycled, and new materials. Within days the arches were complete and we installed all the metalwork, instantly bringing our design to life. Without Dave and Koa’s help, our garden wouldn’t have the distinctive character that it does!

Looking into our garden with the newly fabricated arches and main focal point in place

Laying out the plants before final installation

The arches and containers are planted and the vines are already reaching for the top!

Laying out the plants before installation

Choosing the plants involved some investigation – we needed plants that were fragrant (either flower or foliage), that would bloom throughout most of the six-month season the garden would be in place, and that would be right for the site’s environment and microclimate. In the end, we chose sweeps of Heliotropium arborescens ‘Marine’, Calamintha nepatoides ‘White Cloud’, Salvia guaranitica ‘Black and Blue’, Nemesia fruticans ‘Compact Innocence’, Carex pennsylvanica (Pennsylvania Sedge), an heirloom Lablab purpureus (Purple Hyacinth Bean), and a collection of colorful annuals and perennials including Bee Balm and Chocolate Mint for the containers. Even with the brutal summer heat and scant rainfall, all have done remarkably well in our morning sun/afternoon shade garden with moderate watering and fertilizer.

Our garden in late May, after installation was complete

The garden is now at its peak, with the vines threatening to twine themselves around anything – or anyone – within reach, the Heliotrope, Salvia, and Nemesia have refused to stop blooming, and the Carex has become my favorite native no-mow lawn. We’ve only recently changed out the containers with plants that will bloom from now through fall. The gardens were officially dedicated at a party hosted by Longwood’s Director, Paul Redman, on September 1. It was quite an honor to be among Longwood staff and fellow students celebrating and recognizing the creativity and hard work that went into the very first display gardens designed and created by Professional Gardener Students.

Longwood Instructor Danilo Maffei, APLD chats with Education Dept. Head Doug Needham and Director Paul Redman

If you haven’t visited the Student Exhibition Garden, time is running out! The gardens will be dismantled in October to make way for the PG class of 2011′s gardens next spring. To find out more about the Student Exhibition Gardens, visit Longwood’s website at www.longwoodgardens.org.

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Take a Fragrant Journey From the Jungle to the Lab

The jungle-like setting of Longwood’s newly opened Estate House

For the first time in years one of the original Estate Houses of the Conservatory is open to the public, just for our fascinating Making Scents, the Art and Passion of Fragrance exhibition.  This is one of the original houses, built by Pierre S. du Pont and used to grow the amazing plants and flowers used in our indoor displays.    

 

In this glass house, you can learn about creating perfume from nature. As you enter the room, you first experience a jungle, like the explorer going  into the depths of the forest when looking for that elusive new scent from the plant world. Here, you will find a demonstration of a head space analysis machine that is used to capture the volatile molecules that will one day hopefully lead to a new perfume.     

Head space analysis machine on display at Longwood Gardens

The path leads you out of the “jungle” and into a room that contains plants that smell both good and bad. These are the semi-finalists in the quest to become a perfume ingredient. Guests are invited to get up close, touch and smell these fragrant plants. The next room features the finalists whose fragrances have proven worthy and are now used as key components in perfumes.   

Some of the fragrant plants that guest are invited to touch and smell

From here it is on to mass production, represented by a small greenhouse filled with lavender, and then finally into a house that explores the laboratory where these scents can now be synthesized.  We invite you to visit Longwood to take this fascinating journey with many things to smell along the way.    

The scent of lavender fills the greenhouse

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Experience Lilytopia at Longwood Gardens

A wall of lilies on display in the Conservatory

On Friday, May 21, 2010, Longwood Garden’s newest event Lilytopia opens its doors. Lilytopia celebrates the new golden age of lily hybridizing and serves as a showcase of the latest products of the Dutch lily breeding efforts.

At its core, Lilytopia is an exciting flower exhibition featuring more than 10,000 cut flowers and potted lilies on display in the East Conservatory and selected areas throughout the Gardens. The show designer is Dorien van den Berg, one of Holland’s most creative floral designers and designer of the Keukenhof’s famous annual “Lily Show.” Her design uses the amazing space of the East Conservatory to its fullest.  Towering columns of lily “tree forms,” lily walls, and enormous vases filled with flowers, are arranged to celebrate the beauty of Lilies.  Dorien visited Longwood Gardens several times before designing the show.  The result will be breathtaking and nothing short of astonishing.  In preparation for the show, Dorien included a special trip to Italy to select glasswork and pottery. Craftsmen manufactured the display metal work, each element carefully selected for its beauty and ability to highlight the splendor of the flowers.  The materials and lily cultivars were carefully selected to complement a design that balances color, texture and fragrance to transform the Conservatory into a true Lilytopia.  

Gardeners installing a "Lily Tree" in the East Conservatory

Recent hybridizing efforts have truly created a new golden age of lilies, with a wide assortment of cultivars boasting attributes such as new colors and patterns, double-flowered blooms, refined and pleasing fragrance, and scentless and even pollenless cultivars.  There are cultivars to please even the most sophisticated taste.  The blooms occupy center stage; however, the concept is comprehensive, including educational, professional, arts and entertainment, and cultural components.  The idea is also holistic, showing the newest lily hybrids arranged in floral designs that fuse the American zeitgeist with global trends, creating an experience that transcends both.  The result should inspire both consumers and professionals.  

Lily arrangements being prepared for the display

At this point, the plan is completed and implementation of the show is well under way! We are using an estimated 50,000 stems of display-grade lilies.  Display-grade lilies are the highest quality grade flowers—a grade rarely seen outside of the Netherlands.  These flowers are grown every year for the Keukenhof “Lily Show” and starting this year the tradition includes Longwood Garden’s Lilytopia.  Lilies slated for a show need to be harvested at just the right time.  Certainly lilies can be stored in refrigerated coolers, however longevity of the cut flower may be reduced.  Therefore we are planning on installing lilies that were harvested just hours before in Holland.  An extensive logistical network of breeding houses, warehouse and shipping facilities, airports, export agents, import and shipping companies, government agencies, and trucking companies have been lined up to ensure a safe and speedy transportation of the flowers.  Due to timing issues in Holland, some cultivars intended to go to the Keukenhof show will not bloom in time.  But they will be ready for Lilytopia, making our show, in its inception year, one of the most comprehensive lily shows in the world.  We are pleased to work with our Dutch partners to present visitors with extraordinary flowers right here in the USA.  We are also pleased to be working together with the Keukenhof to present North American growers and lily lovers with the largest living catalog of the best cultivars available anywhere. In addition, during Lilytopia select flowers and bulbs may be purchased directly from our Dutch partner, so guests can grow spectacular lilies in their home gardens. The Lilytopia display will be on view for the public May 21 through 31, 2010.  

The East Conservatory is currently being transformed into a "Lilytopia," opening May 21.

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