Current:Home > Contact-usHow a secret Delaware garden suddenly reemerged during the pandemic-LoTradeCoin
How a secret Delaware garden suddenly reemerged during the pandemic
View Date:2024-12-23 20:45:44
Wilmington, Delaware — If you like a reclamation project, you'll love what Paul Orpello is overseeing at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware.
It's the site of the original DuPont factory, where a great American fortune was made in gunpowder in the 19th century.
"There's no other post-industrial site reimagined in this way," Orpello, the museum's director of gardens and horticulture, told CBS News.
"There's only one in the world," he adds.
It's also where a DuPont heiress, Louise Crowninshield, created a garden in the 1920s.
"It looked like you were walking through an Italian villa with English-style plantings adorning it," Orpello said of the garden.
Crowninshield died in 1958, and the garden disappeared over the ensuing decades.
"Everything that she worked to preserve, this somehow got lost to time," Orpello said.
In 2018, Orpello was hired to reclaim the Crowninshield Garden, but the COVID-19 pandemic hit before he could really get going on the project. However, that's when he found out he didn't exactly need to, because as the world shut down in the spring of 2020, azaleas, tulips and peonies dormant for more than a half-century suddenly started to bloom.
"So much emotion at certain points," Orpello said of the discovery. "Just falling down on my knees and trying to understand."
"I don't know that I could or that I still can't (make sense of it)," he explained. "Just that it's magic."
Orpello wants to fully restore the garden to how Crowninshield had it, with pools she set in the factory-building footprints and a terrace with a mosaic of a Pegasus recently discovered under the dirt.
"There was about a foot of compost from everything growing and dying," Orpello said. "And then that was gently broomed off. A couple of rains later, Pegasus showed up."
Orpello estimates it will cost about $30 million to finish the restoration, but he says he is not focused on the money but on the message.
"It's such a great story of resiliency," Orpello said. "And this whole entire hillside erupted back into life when the world had shut down."
- In:
- COVID-19 Pandemic
- Delaware
Jim Axelrod is the chief investigative correspondent and senior national correspondent for CBS News, reporting for "CBS This Morning," "CBS Evening News," "CBS Sunday Morning" and other CBS News broadcasts.
TwitterveryGood! (2341)
Related
- 2024 'virtually certain' to be warmest year on record, scientists say
- Florida hospitals ask immigrants about their legal status. Texas will try it next
- The Key to Fix California’s Inadequate Water Storage? Put Water Underground, Scientists Say
- Flappy Bird returning in 2025 after decade-long hiatus: 'I'm refreshed, reinvigorated'
- Where you retire could affect your tax bill. Here's how.
- Target brings back popular car seat-trade in program: How you can get the discount
- Judge finds woman incompetent to stand trial in fatal stabbing of 3-year-old outside supermarket
- Maine commission considers public flood insurance
- Jennifer Lopez Turns Wicked Premiere Into Family Outing With 16-Year-Old Emme
- Giants' Heliot Ramos becomes first right-handed batter to hit homer into McCovey Cove
Ranking
- Today’s Savannah Guthrie, Al Roker and More React to Craig Melvin Replacing Hoda Kotb as Co-Anchor
- FACT FOCUS: A look at false claims made by Trump in California
- John Leguizamo celebrates diverse Emmy winners, nominees with emotional speech
- Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan Shares Why She Was “Terrified” at the 2024 Emmys
- Horoscopes Today, November 13, 2024
- Model Bianca Balti Shares Ovarian Cancer Diagnosis
- The Fate of Emily in Paris Revealed After Season 4
- Partial lunar eclipse to combine with supermoon for spectacular sight across U.S.
Recommendation
-
Surfer Bethany Hamilton Makes Masked Singer Debut After 3-Year-Old Nephew’s Tragic Death
-
Ja'Marr Chase's outburst was ignited by NFL's controversial new hip-drop tackle rule
-
Colleges in Springfield, Ohio, move to online instruction after threats targeting Haitians
-
Partial lunar eclipse to combine with supermoon for spectacular sight across U.S.
-
Army veteran reunites with his K9 companion, who served with him in Afghanistan
-
Thousands in California’s jails have the right to vote — but here’s why many won’t
-
A Kentucky lawmaker has been critically injured in lawn mower accident
-
Colleges in Springfield, Ohio, move to online instruction after threats targeting Haitians