May 18th, 2025
Longing to Visit Longwood Gardens
Ahead of World Topiary Day 2025, on May 11, Jane Hunt chatted to Brianna Reid, a dedicated horticulturist at the glorious Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. The reason? Well, unlike many other gardens in the USA, Longwood has its own topiary garden, for which Brianna is responsible on a daily basis.
Jane, on the scent of a great visitor attraction story as ever, as a tourism PR specialist at Catapult PR, discovers the back story of topiary at Longwood Gardens.
With Brianna, she explores how the French origins, love of travel and lavish lifestyle of the gardens’ founding father probably contributed to a little bit of England and France being found at the heart of the Longwood experience.
The pair talk about the first yew trees to enter this space and then a development in the 1950s, which made this a much greater vision. Whimsical topiary, formal topiary and the use of the topiary garden as a link between different gardens at Longwood, Pennsylvania, is all discussed.
Brianna offers her personal insight into the garden, what she loves most, what secrets can be found there and what wildlife also call it home. There is a discussion about weather conditions and topiary and also wasps nests! Brianna’s description should inspire many a tourist or local resident to want to experience this US visitor attraction for themselves.
Jane compares and contrasts things at Longwood to the experience at Levens Hall and Gardens, the founder of World Topiary Day – a creative idea of Jane’s, from 2020. This has dramatically underlined the existence of the world’s oldest topiary garden there and helped drive more visitor numbers to this historic garden, located in the Lake District, Cumbria.
Brianna explains the pride she feels in being able to play a part in World Topiary Day and also whets Jane’s appetite for a visit to Longwood, by explaining all about the magnificent fountain experiences that can be enjoyed there. With Jane left speculating whether there is a show based around Guns N’ Roses music, she concludes the episode by determining that Longwood needs to be added to a list of places and visitor attractions at which she really does need to poodle around in person.
