Villa Kids: New Year's Eve in Longwood Gardens

Three blogs in one day must be a record!

We really had a great new year's eve. For Christmas Debbie got Rex a trip to Bethlehem, Pa to a model train museum. It was really a nice layout, but oops, we forgot the camera. We stopped back by home and then went to Longwood Gardens. This beautiful park has over 1000 acres of plants and trees arranged in very unique areas. They also have a large Conservatory with about 4 acres under glass and very climate controlled.

One of the Dupont family had it built many years ago. (You can look it up on the internet.) They have every kind of plant imaginable, and at Christmas time they decorate it very nicely. We took lots of pictures while we were there. First, we'll show some of the day time pictures we took a few months ago.

The front entrance has lots of plants and trees around it

And they usually have some kind of theme event.

This event had some different sounds that can eminate from the forest

Look Closely

You can see the large wind chimes hanging from the tree outside a big tree house (with a large steel frame).

The tree house was guarded by a couple of dragons.

There was some great fall foliage when Bill Thomas was here to visit, and there was much to see with him.

We could show lots more pictures, and maybe we'll post a blog just on the gardens in the day, but now, on to our New Year's eve spectacle.

This is one of the walkways just inside the entrance. Pictures just don't capture the glow.

This tree had hundreds of clear glass ornaments on it as well as the white lights.

On our way to the conservatory we passed this expanse where they have a fountain show during the day. You'll see another picture from higher up a little later.

But we just had to see the "G" scale model trains first.

There were several. Fortunately it wasn't real cold, because these are outside.

Here is that fountain area from the patio of the conservatory.

They had many beautiful trees inside.

Even a gingerbread man tree.

I tried to get the perspective here. This was a really high room, with a sunken garden and lighted ceiling. If I had photoshop I would have pieced these together.

The pipe organ at Longwood Gardens is one of the largest in the world. There are some 10,010 pipes in 140+ ranks, which is 20 some more ranks than the organ in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. This organist is friends with Richard Elliot of the Tabernacle Choir. We had a wonderful visit with him. It was like a private recital.