Today we took a field trip to Hershey gardens in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The town of Hershey is (yep yep) where Milton Hershey founded the Hershey confectionery company. Hershey gardens were created when Hershey was approached and asked to donate to a rose gardens in Washington DC. He though it was a good idea, but rather than build it in Washington, he built it in his own town. It was opened to the public in 1937. The gardens started small, with just the rose gardens, but soon expanded to the current 23 acres. Hershey gardens used to be hugely popular, 20,000 people attended its opening day! And for a long time it was a popular weekend destination with people coming by train from New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington. But gardens are no longer the destinations they used to be, and attendance has now dropped.
Contrary to what might be thought, Hershey gardens is not rolling in dollars.Whilst Milton Hershey was a philanthropist who left a lot of money to a school, the gardens pretty much missed out. Barbara (an ex Longwood PG who is the horticulture director) who gave us our tour told us that she had been given a grand total of $37000 over 16 years for plants. The garden is a non-profit organisation and is now supported by the town and admissions.
I thought the gardens were great, and impressive given the funding. The rose gardens were outstanding. I was interesting to hear the receive the all American rose selections every year and replace under performing roses. Not sentimental in anyway! Other highlights including some wonderful mature specimen trees, including a huge weeping beech and another giant weeping blue atlas cedar (probably the largest weeping specimen Ive seen). I thought there children's garden was fun with some pretty cool little touches (ringing bell stepping pads, fountains, maps etc. A lot of it was educational for example a ABC border. There is also a butterfly house near the children's garden. they were all a bit slow due to it being colder than usual. The butterfly house is a huge draw card. As is the children's garden.
Oh and another highlight was a birdhouse competition they were holding. A good, and original idea! Some really neat arty ones
Thats a Sedum Hybrid flowering in the left photo, there are loads out at the moment. Innocuous (boring even?) for most of the year, but effective flowering in autumn. And the birdhouse on the right is surrounded by what I think is a variegated red stemmed Dogwood.
After the tour of the gardens we went to... Hersheys chocolate world! Ha. Ate to much chocolate and partook in blatant American consumerism.
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