GCW Members

HOW A SECRET DELAWARE GARDEN REEMERGED DURING THE PANDEMIC

Wendy Russell

A historic garden at Hagely that disappeared for more than a half-century reemerged during the pandemic. Jim Axelrod, CBS News, has the story in "Eye on America." If you haven’t seen it yet, you will love what Paul Orpello is overseeing at the Hagley Museum and Library.

Hagley’s main ornamental garden, recently replanted and revived, is based on the type of formal fruit and vegetable garden that the company patriarch would have known in his homeland, full of espaliered apple and pear trees basking in the sun. But it is the shadier garden on the other side of the house, occupying terraces that descend to the creek, that is far more secret, mysterious and alluring.

Built as a neoclassical ruin almost a century ago and now a real one, left mostly untouched for more than six decades. It is beginning to stir from its slumber.

Over the past couple of years, the staff have started to remove the porcelain berry, bittersweet and other monstrous vines that have smothered the landscape, partially revealing the contours of the terraced landscape along with its jewels. Long-dormant spring blooms, snowdrops, snowflakes, Virginia bluebells, trillium and hesperis have returned after decades underground.

"There's no other post-industrial site reimagined in this way," Orpello, the museum's director of gardens and horticulture, recently told CBS News.  “There's only one in the world," he adds.

Read more about how Louise Crowninshield, created the garden in the 1920s.
CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE STORY FROM CBS NEWS