Christmas At Longwood Gardens

Edited to add - click on 'Girl in Nature' blog on my sidebar to see some of my daughters photos from today!

I hope you are not tired of reading about Longwood Gardens. We really love it there, even in the winter. We went to see the Wildlife Tree that our homeschool co-op made decorations to go on it - they all had natural items that wildlife eat - seeds, pods, thistle, etc...I took a few photos - the tree looked really good - but somehow they didn't get transfered to my computer. I hope Lindsay took some!

We visited two of the tree houses, the Peirce-duPont house and then Tim, Emily and the younger kids went to explore the meadow, while Lindsay and I went to check out the conservatory.

The weather today never got above 32 degrees and it was very windy! I think Lindsay and I made the smart choice!

It was beautiful...every year they do different things and this year I just loved the many Christmas trees, and Pierre duPont's music room which is decorated in a different way every year also!

It is hard to tell but this huge tree was decorated in shades of blue..so pretty.
They brought in these Magnolias and lit them with white lights. The Magnolias were all around the perimeter of the Orangery.

There were several of these trees in the same portion of the conservatory as the big tree I showed you in the beginning. These were the same kinds of ornaments on the big tree.

There were several of these trees near the music room. The had white lights and strings of glass berries and leaves.

There was a lot of this beautiful winter blooming Begonia in the conservatory. Great red color, much better than my camera shows. Guess where they used this plant as well?

Isn't this tree stunning? And yes the red on this tree comes from the begonias and from these ornaments.
It was all so pretty...then we went into the music room.

It was stunning. Dim light - huge Christmas trees in the corners of the room, small tables for four each with the same color scheme - red and golds - but different linens and flowers on each table.

I love the pillars - the carpenters at Longwood made them out of walnut just for this display - they match the regular wood work in the room and made it possible to swag gold fabric around the room to soften everything.

This photo isn't very clear but you can see the beautiful place settings, and each table had a small lamp on it that provided the light for that table.

This is one of the trees from the corners of the music room. This room got my mind whirling! I need to plan an event to use some of these ideas! Anyone getting married soon? Oh, maybe for Lindsay's 18th birthday....hmmm. Not sure I could pull that off in three days...

If you get the chance to go to Longwood Gardens before January 10th, then I encourage you to go! It is so beautiful. Just make sure you bundle up!