Mt. Cuba Center
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mt. Cuba Center 630 acres (255 ha) is a non-profit botanical garden and historical preserve located on Barley Mill Road in Greenville, Delaware, near Wilmington, USA in the gently rolling hills of the Delaware Piedmont. It preserves rural pastures and fields, protects local forests, and includes various woodland wildflower gardens and formal landscapes, and its woodland gardens produce some of the most spectacular displays of wildflowers in the mid-Atlantic region. The Center is open to the public for a fee, but admission must be arranged in advance.
Mt. Cuba's well-documented plant collection is focused on the study of Delaware Piedmont flora, with well over 4,600 accesions representing more than 1,800 taxa, of which roughly 75% are of Piedmont origin. Horticultural research focuses on Cimicifuga, Cypripedium, Helonias, Hepatica, Hexastylis, Stewartia and Trillium, and Mt. Cuba Center is a "national collection" holder for Hexastylis and Trillium. Several of its introductions are widely popular, including Aster laevis 'Bluebird', Aster novae-angliae 'Purple Dome' and Solidago sphacelata 'Golden Fleece'.
The Center encompasses a diverse set of grounds, ranging from a formal Lilac Path, Round Garden, and South Terrace to more natural gardens including the Dogwood Path, Meadow, Pond Garden, West Slope Path, and Woods Path.
Mt. Cuba started as the vision of the late Mr. and Mrs. Lammot du Pont Copeland, who began acquiring land near Wilmington, Delaware in 1935, and completed construction of their Colonial Revival house in 1937. During the late 1930's, formal areas were designed first by the prominent Philadelphia landscape architect Thomas W. Sears and later, in the 1950s, by noted landscape designer Marian C. Coffin.
The naturalistic gardens were developed 1965-1971 under the design of Seth Kelsey, a Harvard trained landscape architect from Massachusetts, to feature native trees, shrubs, and native wildflowers. In the early 1980s, with input from director Dr. Richard W. Lighty, the Copelands expanded their gardening to encompass the entire Piedmont region. After Mr. Copeland's death in 1983, Mrs. Copeland continued garden development and refinement. Mrs. Copeland died in 2001, and the Center has since continued as a non-profit organization.
