The Long (wood) and short of it

Longwood Garden is the best known and largest of the gardens included on this geek tour.  It does not disappoint.  Longwood has lots of everything, lightly managed natural appearing areas, vistas, a pretty good diversity of plants, a few impressive specimens but nothing extraordinary, manicured formal gardens, fountains and water features (my favorite was water gushing down a now re purposed broad cement staircase), topiary (and you known my feelings about poodling shrubs - some of these were poodles!), and acres of pretty impressive conservatory specimens.  Of course if you had DuPont money to fund your garden it could be pretty fancy too.  While a bit of a Disneyland of gardens, Longwood is worth a walk around, once, and without doubt you'll find something of interest, something that charms you, something very attractive. You want trees; they got trees.  You want azaleas; they got azaleas.  You want fountains; they got fountains (set to music).  You want orchids; they got orchids.  And so on down a long, long list. It is pretty spectacular when you see many gardens there are and how much TLC is lavished upon them, pretty much the complete opposite of Bartram's Garden, and that's the long and short of this BGT.  It is worth mentioning that their cafeteria/lunch counter is way above average in terms of food quality (e.g., a brie and smoked turkey on a whole wheat hoagie).  So if you go, make sure you have your walking shoes on.  No figuring out what single image best illustrates this garden.  None of them, really, so here's an artificial vista albeit a very nice one.