Winterthur, Delaware, legacy of Henry Francis du Pont, 1880-1969, American

 

More diverse and in a more complex design than other gardens in Henry Francis du Pont’s schema, Sycamore Hill comprises fragrant, shaded allees in June and early July. 

 

The pivot of this concentration is an old sycamore tree which stands in the heel of an ‘L’ shaped formation of greenways. 

 

 

 

 

A large tulip poplar, sitting on the edge of an escarpment anchors one edge of the L – its horizontal leg – behind a gazebo.

 

 

 

On the left behind the gazebo, a tulip poplar and on the right a Western catalpa

 

 

The horizontal L is wide and harbours a significant number of trees, both native and non-native which provide wonderful shade amidst the fragrance of flowering bushes and trees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Behind the sycamore, streaming up the  vertical leg of the L are bushes and a stand of kousa (Japanese) dogwood which bloom in June.

 

 

 

 

 

A view looking up the vertical leg of the L from under a mature kousa (Japanese) dogwood

 

 

 

In June

and early July, both greenways are filled with flowering trees and bushes.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The predominant colour is white, here and there enlivened with red, pinks, lavender.

 

 

Bushes of white cottoneaster salacifolia

 

 

Japanese Spirea

 

 

 

Styrax Obassia (Fragrant Snowbell)

 

 

 

 

Glenn Dale hybrid  azalea behind weigelia

 

 

 

Deutzia crenata

 

 

Deutzia magnifica in flower

 

 

 

Weigelia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

American Fringe tree framing a kousa (Japanese) dogwood tree

 

American Fringe Tree.  Fragrant at certain times in its flowering.  Distinct but not overwhelming. 

 American Fringe (Chionanthus Virginicus) shedding flowers

 

 

 

Kousa (Japanese) dogwood whose dense flowers seem to have made it more popular than native dogwoods

 

 

Weigelia framing a Cornus kousa

 

 

 

Deutzia Cultivar

 

 

 

The flowers of the Garland Butterfly Bush (Buddleia Alternifolia)

 

 

 

Flowers of the bush, Fragrant Abelia, yet to open this year in mid-May

Flowers of the bush, Fragrant Abelia, in early June

 

 

 

Japanese spirea 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flowering of a native dogwood:  Cornus alternifolia

 

 

The flower of the Oyama Magnolia tree 

 

 

Looking over the hedge to open fields at the back of the horizontal L

 

 

 

Tea viburnum in two colours

 

 

The flower of the American Yellowwood (Cladrastis kentukea)

 

 

 

The flower of the bush, Philadelphus (mock orange),  native to the Americas but not only

 

 

Red Buckeye

 

 

 

white mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia)

 

 

 

When you leave Sycamore Hill, you walk some way into the park or down to the museum before you feel that you are beyond the magnetic field of this immense tree, the old sycamore,

accompanied now by its garden of many flowers.