Long walk among the lovelies at Longwood Gardens

I probably could have gawked all day at the beautiful things growing at Longwood Gardens (in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania), but we had a date with the Pennsylvania Turnpike so we cut our visit short around 2 p.m. and then drove all stinking day and into the night--and paid heavily for the privilege. I don't object to paying $23 each to walk around Longwood Gardens for a few hours, but paying $33 to drive for hours on a foggy, bumpy, poorly maintained highway seems like a travesty.

We didn't really have time to go to Longwood Gardens but I wanted to decompress after our time in the city, and I also remember how much my mother loved the place. I knew at once what she loved about it--long lanes lined with blossoms, wisteria dangling overhead, a welcoming path through leafy woods, tulips and foxgloves in every shade imaginable and a grotto crowded with columbines reflected in water. I'm sure she loved the orchid room, where some of the blossoms look like the kind of flower a three-year-old with a fresh box of crayons would design, and I know she would have loved my favorite orchid, with simple but elegant butter-yellow blossoms that looked a little like musical notes.

My husband was delighted with the succulents, cacti stretching high overhead or clutching the ground like fallen pinecones, and the man who grows banana trees in Ohio was thrilled to find some in bloom. (Our growing season is too short and cool to allow our banana trees to ever blossom or fruit.) Everywhere we looked, we saw something amazing: pink tulips with blossoms as big as my hand, painted tongue flowers so gaudy they looked like the aftermath of an explosion at a paint factory, pitcher plants and staghorn ferns and a trident maple bonsai with a canopy of three-pointed leaves so perfectly balanced it spoke peace.

I kept wanting to smuggle spectacular specimens in my backpack, but I know I don't have what it takes to maintain that kind of garden: a trained gardening staff, a hefty endowment, and ancestors with the foresight to set aside a huge swath of land and plant amazing things there. But I did have a mom who loved beautiful things, and while I walked through Longwood Gardens I kept wanting to call out Look, Mom--see how pretty! And if she were still with us, she would have kept smiling that gentle smile all the way down the garden path.

A quiet and inviting path through the woods

A white variety of redbud

wisteria

Columbines--I like the yellow ones best

These tulip blossoms were as big as my hand.

We listened to this catbird run through an incredible repertoire of song.

Cucumber magnolia--huge green buds opening into yellow blossoms.

I want this treehouse.

The Green Wall--just one small piece of it.

Painted tongue.

I don't know what this is.

Note the bird bush in the upper right.

Lollipop bush

Banana tree blossom

Tree fern

Really gaudy orchids

My favorite orchid.

I don't know what this is but I like it.

Trident maple bonsai

Pitcher plants

This tall tree with the green trunk was among the succulents.

More succulents.

He's trying to figure out how to smuggle that cactus home.

I'm glad I don't have to mow those terraces.