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The Atlas Obscura Podcast

Enchanted Woods (Classic)

The Atlas Obscura Podcast

SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Society & Culture, Places & Travel

4.61.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We go to Wilmington, Delaware, to a 4-acre garden with characters and exhibits created using castoff materials and greenery that invites kids to drop screens and rules – and instead give in to a state of play.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Once upon a time, there were two little sisters, Pauline and Ruth DuPont.

0:09.5

And they lived in a massive, luxurious mansion in Wilmington, Delaware.

0:14.1

They were the daughters of Henry Francis DuPont, one of the heirs of the very powerful DuPont business dynasty.

0:21.6

Pauline and Ruth just wanted to play.

0:24.9

But the DuPont mansion was full of all of this expensive art and furniture.

0:30.2

They pretty much lived in a museum, but in the bad way,

0:33.1

where everything had to be just so, and you couldn't touch anything.

0:37.1

And as one of the daughters wrote to her father in one of her Christmas cards,

0:40.7

she made a poem in the Christmas card that talked about living in a house where you're not allowed to sit on the furniture.

0:47.0

One place the kids were allowed to play was in the extensive 60-acre garden.

0:52.2

Sometimes the girls would take their books out there to read,

0:55.2

and even at some point they were able to convince Daddy DuPont to add in a swing set.

1:00.2

That was a little home away from home.

1:02.5

In the early 1950s, the entire estate was turned into the Winterthur Museum garden and library.

1:09.9

But it wouldn't be until the year 2000,

1:12.3

when the museum staff,

1:13.9

inspired by the story of Ruth and Pauline's respites into the garden,

1:18.2

used that story as a launching pad to create what is now the enchanted woods.

1:24.3

There's so many artistic moments in the garden,

1:27.2

moments that lead children to take a flight with their imagination, because they see something they've never seen before.

1:37.9

My name is Dylan Thuris, and this is Atlas Obscira, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places.

1:49.0

Today, we go to Wilmington, Delaware, to the enchanted woods at Winterthur Gardens, this four-acre garden,

...

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