in brandywine valley gardens, the du pont family legacy

IT’S HARD TO THINK of another place so rich with major gardens as the Brandywine Valley in Chester County, Pa., and an adjacent portion of Delaware. Five of those gardens have a historic connection—a family connection—as they were all by members of the du Pont family.

A new book,“Du Pont Gardens of the Brandywine Valley” (affiliate link) portrays the story of those places, and its photographer and writer took me on some virtual visits to these must-see gardens.

The book profiles five gardens created by generations of the du Pont industrial family—Longwood, Winterthur, and Mt. Cuba among them—in photographs by Larry Lederman and words by Marta McDowell, my guests.

Read along as you listen to the Oct. 16, 2023 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

the du pont gardens of the brandywine

Margaret: Marta, it’s good to talk to you again. I haven’t talked to you in a while, but I hope all as well in both of your worlds. It looks like you two did some garden visiting, and certainly studying up on some of these gardens. Because wow, it’s a big book full of photographs and text as well.

As I said in the introduction, the five gardens, it’s not like they’re related entities managed by the same organization or anything, are they? They’re related by human ancestry. Is that right, Larry?

Larry: Yes. They have their unique histories and different branches of the family. I spent about a year and a half photographing them, and I went down every two weeks and stayed for two or three days. When I went down, I had a place at Longwood where I could stay. It was actually my COVID