Winterthur is a jewel of an estate located in northern Delaware; it is the ancestral home of the du Pont family, one of the wealthiest in American history.
Although its museum and library are famous for their collection of Americana, it was the gardens that Henry Francis du Pont most cared about on that property. The earliest du Ponts to cultivate the grounds began in 1839, but it was H.F. du Pont who spent a half a century of his life really shaping them.
He hired the first female owner of a landscape architecture firm, Marian Cruger Coffin, to plan out the most formal gardens abutting his mansion. These photos are the ones toward the end of this post.
As the grounds spread away from the central buildings, the gardens look more natural, with woods and meadows, streams and hills integrated into the “Wild Garden” style that became popular in the early 20th century. The Winterthur Gardens are one of the few remaining of this type.
The effect is that the gardens seem unplanned, even though great thought went into all of the varied species of plants and trees in it. Native wildflowers, rhododendron, acres of dogwoods, banks of azaleas flourish alongside rarer irises, peonies, and trees.
H.F. du Pont often said that he was merely a visitor to his estate, but he was “always Winterthur’s head gardener”.
Sources: Https://www.winterthur.org/history-of-the-garden/
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