Opening the Gates: Landscape Experts Discuss Public Gardens with Private Pasts

Join us at the Read House & Gardens for a panel discussion on stewarding public landscapes that were originally designed as private gardens.

This is an in-person event, free and open to the public. Registration is required.

Register Below

Like the Read House, former family properties from Winterthur to the Main Line to the Oldfields estate in Indianapolis are now steered by nonprofit missions to benefit the wider community. How does that new use inform the decisions we make about preserving or reshaping them? Are they the same as public parks? What about the thousands of years of history that came before them?

As the Delaware Historical Society continues its own community planning initiative to make the Read House landscape vibrant for the next generation, expert panelists will talk through these complicated questions.

Panelists

Dr. Emily T. Cooperman

Independent scholar, Philadelphia

David A. Rubin

Principal, DAVID RUBIN Land Collective, Philadelphia and Indianapolis

Chris Strand

Charles F. Montgomery Director and CEO, Winterthur Museum, Library & Garden

Moderated by Brenton Grom, Director of the George Read II House & Gardens