Longwood Gardens: West Conservatory

The Conservatory’s crystalline silhouette, doubled by its reflection in the water, also amplifies the surrounding landscape’s impact. The pleated and undulating glass roof reconciles the legacy of the Burnham production greenhouses with a new garden under glass that shelters the garden inside. This conservatory replaces an ad hoc collection of obsolete greenhouses with a new garden experience, accessible to visitors of all abilities.

By anticipating climate change, the Conservatory will house botanic arrangements that thrive in extremes, such as very hot or very wet climates. The conservatory gardens are designed to appear as if floating on water, and are conceived as islands amid canals and fountains that enable plants to thrive in a controlled environment. As a living and breathing building with climate activated walls and roofs, the Conservatory sustains the interior garden’s natural beauty while also providing opportunities for research and revelation. Just as the plants inside the Conservatory are nourished by light, air, and water, so too is this living, breathing building animated by these very same elements.

In the tapestry-like garden design, iconic plants of this ecology such as aloes, laurels, blueblossom, and Greek horehound hug the ground, with higher plants such as cypress and 100-year-old olive trees rising up into the soaring space while other plantings are suspended from above. This new West Conservatory with its asymmetrical crystalline peaks seems to float on a pool of water, while the garden inside, inspired by the wild and cultivated landscapes of the Mediterranean, is conceived as seasonally changing islands set amid pools, canals, and low fountains.