My family and I took a trip recently (about a week ago, act
ually. I’m just very bad at this “blogging” business.) to Longwood Gardens. Longwood is a pretty well known botanical gardens on the East Coast, sitting pretty about thirty miles south of Philadelphia.
And let me tell y’all, it is gorgeous.
I’ve been wanting to go to a botanical garden in my area for over a year. I’ve waited until I got my DSLR camera (and finished a photography class) and 
I went over with my family last weekend. It was a perfect day: sunny, not humid, not that busy either. It was great.
We set out early in the morning and made the two hour journey from the Jersey Shore out to Pennsylvania. I’m pretty sure I napped the whole way.
They were promoting the Italian Fountains Showcase, which was quite gorgeous. The grass even had an image of the American flags (at least, the stars and stripes) mown into it. They also had the recently opened Water Lily Showcase, which was perhaps my favorite part. There were so many different lilies and water plants, and they were so photogenic too! The Flower Walk was the first thing we went to, which you can see part of it to the left, and I only wished there were more flowers throughout the gardens. They were also renovating the topiary garden, but they had some of it open to guests while we were there. They’re apparently planning on revealing a huge topiary and fountain area by 2017. I’m very excited to see it.
On certain days, the staff do bird watching walks and other educational walks through the huge Meadow area, a huge open field near the first owner’s manor. Everything was just so stunning. If you’re in the NJ/PA area, I highly recommend visiting Longwood. They’ve got relatively cheap tickets, and there’s a student discount too! Check out the gallery below for some of my choice photos. You can also see all of the photos I’ve taken at Longwood (and beyond) at my Flickr page and my 500px profile.
