The Heron Files: Gardens at Winterthur

On a recent trip back from Philadelphia, my wife and I stopped at the wonderful gardens at Winterthur. Winterthur was the estate of Henry Francis du Pont, an avid antique collector and gardener in the early to mid 20th century. On the grounds is the massive, 175-room house that now is open as a museum highlighting American antiques. We focused on walking the gardens; over 60 acres. There are also 25 miles of hiking trails that we didn't explore this time but may stop back by to explore. Apparently some of the land is still old-growth forest. Something hard to come by here in the east.

While we had a map of the grounds, much of our tour focused on the "white arrow" tour. Henry Francis used to set out white arrows to point the way for his visitors to see the areas currently in bloom. The museum continues that tradition.

Spring was still waking in many areas when we visited and a cold front moved through the day before so we were well bundled to enjoy the early bloomers. Flowering magnolia trees were one area of focus. We came across multiple group plantings of different cultivars with different color patterns. They made really nice combinations.

A focus of the early spring blooming flowers are ground covers. There were several places throughout the garden blanketed with flowers making the most of the available sun before the trees overhead leave-out. These included a huge bank of one of our favorite spring flowers, ipheion. At one of our first stops there was a bank of Italian windflower moving ever so gently in the day's breeze.

ipheion

Italian windflower

Near the ipheions on the edge of the sundial garden is a mix of flowering quince. Again, the mixing of the colors, ranging from deep red, to pink, to orange, is really beautiful.

And while many of the daffodils were starting to fade, there was this wonderful combination of daffodils and forsythia looking out over a golf course (yes, Henry Francis had his own, personal golf course).