Longwood Gardens Master Plan
Longwood Gardens 40-Year Master Plan
Kennett Square, PA
“Creating A World Apart,” Longwood Gardens’ first physical master plan, is a visionary document that plans Longwood Gardens’ trajectory over the next 40-years into one of the Great Gardens of the World.
The ultimate master plan is ambitious: to create an international garden destination that will endure for centuries, to solve short-term problems, to accommodate growing visitation and expanded programs through new facilities, to lay out daily, seasonal and peak scenarios for logistics, circulation and infrastructure, to streamline operations and maintenance to be truly sustainable, to meet the highest standards of sustainability and stewardship, and to reaffirm the relevance of gardens in our lives.
The master plan is highly detailed but also flexible, and it allows Longwood Gardens to embody what unifies all Great Gardens—it will be a living work, inspired by the spirit of the place, cultivated at the scale of the gardener’s hand and acquiring its unique character over the long term.
Three categories of projects are defined which allow Longwood to grow and evolve over a generation: New Entry Projects (wicked problems involving parking, infrastructure, arrival sequences and site-wide systems), Legacy Projects (including Main Fountain Garden and other core du Pont gardens), and a la Carte Projects (custom furnishings & Webb Barn or other easily added guest amenities). Longwood Gardens has continued design and construction work in all three categories, ensuring momentum is carried forth and the master plan is more than a fixed document.
Unknown Studio’s Claire Agre and Dave Zielnicki served as Senior Landscape Architects and project leaders on the master plan while at West 8.
Project timeline: 2010-2011
Client: Longwood Gardens, Inc.
Scope: Master Plan
Project type: Campus | Garden | Culture
Size: 1033 Acres
Budget: n/a
Team: West 8 urban design & landscape architecture, p.c (Prime Consultant)
Claire Agre, Principal & Senior Landscape Architect
Dave Zielnicki, Senior Landscape Architect
Consultants: Weiss | Manfredi Architecture & Programming, Sherwood Design Engineers, Sam Schwartz Traffic Planning, Fluidity Design Consultants, Dagher Engineers, Stuart Lynn Cost Estimating.
