Even upon turning into the driveway, flanked by beautifully crafted iron gates, depicting the local flora, including the native white oak, we then continue uphill, with vistas out onto the meadows and fields belonging to the estate.
Finally we arrive at the Colonial-Revival Style manor house, once the home of the Lammot Du Pont Copeland family.
After a wonderful introduction from the staff, we move onto the back terraces into the Formal Gardens of the estate. We are surrounded by American native azaleas, trained almost as hedges, as we continue to move down the brick path towards a central, cross shaped pool, surrounded by exuberant bedding displays of multi-coloured tulips and viola against the bright blue of the water.
But this very ordered and symmetrical garden hides the true nature of Mt. Cuba, as we soon discovered when we continued on.
We then move further, into the woodland adjacent to the house and garden, and are met by immense drifts of Tiarella and wild phlox. Dodecatheon meadia, Trillium grandiflora and the American Wood Poppy.
Mount Cuba is dedicated to the Native plants of the Piedmont region of the Eastern U.S, and has superb collections of many beautiful American wildflowers, this includes a fine trillium garden with many different and diverse species of this plant renown for its difficulty in cultivation, and a warm season meadow.
Possibly the finest part of this garden are the ponds, which sit in the bottom of the valley. There are four, interconnected by calm streams which meander through the woodland. The tranquility of this part of the garden is really quite hard to relate, again it is met by the pastel shades of the phlox and Tiarella, but also the native azaleas and Dogwoods.
And also a delight to see growing were the Cypripedium parviflorum, which we saw growing in great numbers on the woods path area of the garden.
We also had an excellent tour of the trillium garden, which holds a vast collection of trilliums from both the grandiflora and sessile groups.
Above, this double flowering sport of T. grandiflora was particularly interesting, as was the foul smelling, but beautiful Twisted Trillim below!
However, Mount Cuba's role in maintaining the rich flora and habitats of the American east coast region does not stop within the center's gardens. They also maintain the surrounding landscape which falls under their estate, some 533 acres of woodland, forest and meadows which is slowly being reverted to its natural state. Started 15 years ago, the Center's Natural Lands Project has seen invasive species removed from the environment, extensive new tree planting and re-forestation initiatives and the establishment of wetlands and other wildlife habitats.
Mount Cuba was certainly a delight to visit, and left a lasting impression on all of us with its subtle, wild looking plantings, showing off to brilliant effect the beauty of the regions diverse flora.
John Cookson, Mount Cuba Center, Delaware, 06/05/2015