In October of 2021, Chris Strand, the longtime director of garden and estate at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, was named its Charles F. Montgomery Director and Chief Executive Officer. Chris recently met with Greenville & Hockessin Life to discuss how his early love of horticulture served as an inspiration, the lasting influence of Winterthur founder Henry Francis du Pont, the future challenges for cultural institutions and a dinner party guest list whose topic of discussion will no doubt be centered on the beautiful science of landscapes and gardens.

Greenville & Hockessin Life: A future novelist is inspired to write from a children’s book he or she reads in a local library. A future gymnast falls in love with the sport during an elementary school gym class. The directions our lives often take are influenced by our childhood experiences. Is there a definitive moment or experience from your childhood that connects you to Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library?

Chris Strand: I grew up in Colorado Springs, and a person who looms large there is Spencer Penrose, who was a prominent entrepreneur, philanthropist, and mining magnate known for his contributions to the city. I went to a parochial school, and we were once invited to visit Spencer and Julie Penrose’s house, which featured a beautiful garden that was designed by the Olmstead brothers. As a ten-year-old kid, I couldn’t get over seeing horticulture at that level. I later studied horticulture as part of Longwood Gardens’ graduate program, and as part of that program, I was able to visit Winterthur, Hagley Museum and Gibraltar and study so many other historic landscapes. After I graduated, I was employed at the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard and then worked at a 1750-era house with a garden designed by landscape architect Beatrix Farrand.

Winterthur Founder Henry Francis du Pont once wrote: “I sincerely hope that the Museum will be a continuing source of inspiration and education for all time, and that the gardens and grounds will of themselves be a country place museum where visitors may enjoy, as I have, not only the flowers, trees and shrubs but also the sunlit meadows, shady wood paths, and the peace and great calm of a country place which has been loved and taken care of for three generations.”

That’s an amazing legacy to leave, and the simple truth is that everyone associated with Winterthur closely follows that same mission. While everyone here has a task, a skill and a responsibility, what are the intangibles – a similar connection - that Winterthur employees bring to their jobs?

There is an internal, unseen unity that binds all of us together here at Winterthur, which is revealed in our attention and care for this place. If you are a guest coming for a tour and going through the collection, our staff will either answer your question, or you may get a note or an email later that provides the answer. Anyone of us – no matter who we are – will stop and help a

visitor get to where they want to go if they are lost. If we are on a golf cart and see a piece of trash out of the corner of our eye, we’ll stop and pick it up. Our former estate historian Maggie Lidz called it Winterthur’s “Founder Effect” — that devotion to care and attention that has been part of the estate for over 100 years.

To recognize the Museum’s 75th anniversary next year – and the nation’s 250th anniversary - Winterthur is planning some huge celebrations in 2026. Would you care to give the readers of Greenville & Hockessin Life a sneak peek into what is in store?

We have a lot going on next year, including the fact that it will also be the 25th anniversary of our Enchanted Woods, which means that many of the kids who visited as children may now have children of their own. We will have a new exhibit, “At Home at Winterthur,” which will open on May 23, which is a self-reflection that will lean heavily on our archives to tell people what life was like here at Winterthur. Then in the fall, we will have an exhibition, “Challenging Masterpieces,” which will focus on Winterthur’s decorative arts collection and highlight 40 objects from our furniture collection. I think that “Challenging Masterpieces,” and highlighting items from Henry du Pont’s collection, would really make him happy. I am grateful to our curators for coming up with the idea for the exhibition.

Perhaps the only blemish on what promises to be another stellar calendar of special events in 2026 will be the news that Winterthur’s signature Point-to-Point steeplechase will not take place next May. What led to that decision, and can we all look forward to Delaware’s most popular social event coming back in 2027 and beyond?

We pour thousands of hours into Point-to-Point, and when we said that we wanted to host a 75th anniversary spring celebration, we realized that in order to do that well, we really needed to focus. So, we decided to pause Point-to-Point for 2026 and evaluate the possibility of its return for 2027. We’re planning our 75th anniversary celebration for May 15 and 16, 2026, and we hope it will be something that reflects the importance of this anniversary and something that everyone can get excited about and come to. Our expectations are high, and I have an incredible amount of confidence in our events team to fulfill those expectations.

Our modern life has been cursed by the plethora of distractions now common to us, and the immediacy of obtaining culture and entertainment of any kind – anywhere in the world - in the flick of a few buttons on a phone. How has it begun to rebrand itself as an antidote to this new reality?

The whole AI reality has made rapid progress in the way people use and obtain information. I do feel like there is a new generation who live their lives according to what is on the screen and would be interested in being around things that are not on the screen, and in person. For places like Winterthur, we’re a place to come and see that. I think there is a high value proposition in coming to see real objects and understand that people owned them and have passed them on. They have hidden stories, and we are here to share those stories.

One of our staff members told me that our digital collections serve as an invitation to come see us in person. What we do is incredibly valuable and its value will go up as people look to unplug and embrace being in nature and seeing real objects.

In your opinion, what are the largest challenges facing cultural institutions of prominence today? Where are the uphill climbs that have happened, continue to happen and will likely happen in the future, and how is Winterthur preparing itself to meet those challenges?

Almost all organizations are seeing the marketplace and thinking about ways to maintain financial sustainability. I think we have that in common with everyone – not just with cultural institutions but with all businesses.

There is also the issue of resiliency. We have 1,000 acres here and in 2020, we had a tornado and a hurricane, and we lost 94 trees. We began to ask, ‘What does the future hold for places like this if the environment continues to change?’ We have 500 beech trees in the garden alone and another couple thousand on the estate, for example. We’re working on a plan that will meet the challenge of the effects of beech leaf disease. With this new disease, the landscape will look very different than it does today.

We are also asking, ‘Where are the future leaders of this field coming from?’ As we look for the next star curator or the next creative horticulturist, where is that person coming from? We have two graduate programs, and through those programs we have helped train more than 1,000 talented individuals and sent them out to the wider world to do great work. We believe they are helping to meet this need.

We are also bringing in schoolchildren here, because we feel it is important for them to have an experience at a cultural institution like this, so that they feel comfortable. When they grow up, they will visit Winterthur, Longwood Gardens, the Franklin Institute or the National Portrait Gallery, because they are interested in culture and art – and they will see these visits as an important part of their lives.

It’s a pay-it-forward strategy, so that the next generation has an idea about why cultural institutions, like Winterthur, are so special.

You conduct Director’s Garden Walks. How did that start and where can the readers of Greenville & Hockessin Life expect to visit if they choose to join you on these walks?

When I was at the Arnold Arboretum, there had been a tradition where my fellow students and I would walk with visitors through the collection. Inspired by this, I have been doing these sorts of walks at Winterthur for the past 20 years. When I began them, I was surprised at how interested people were in that experience – and not just in my walks, but in the walks that our guides and other staff conduct. I recently had a visitor stop me and tell me that some of the behind-the-scenes collection tours led by our guides have been some of the most amazing walks he has ever experienced.

My walks are about showing our visitors something they never imagined they would see here. Winterthur’s Garden Manager Carol Long and one of our horticulturists, Collin Hadsell, likewise, conduct walks and reveal things that wow people and show them new things in Winterthur’s landscape.

Let’s fast forward to a Spring afternoon in 2026. It is a picture-perfect day in northern Delaware, and you give yourself permission to leave your office for a two-hour, uninterrupted period to explore as much of Winterthur as possible – no guided walks, just you. I am not asking you to name your favorite destinations at Winterthur – that would be impossible and unfair to places not chosen – but where would you visit during those two hours?

I love our gardens, and we have roads and trails everywhere, so many to choose from. But if I had that time, I would start at Chandler Woods and make an arc around that and pick up the garden at Garden Lane and then head to Duck Pond Woods, our only wooded wetlands. That walk would take me through about one-third of our garden, two-thirds of our natural area and give me a chance to absorb the Brandywine landscape.

What is your favorite spot in Greenville or Hockessin?

In the Hockessin-Yorklyn vicinity, I have always been interested in the Auburn Heights area. It’s a combination of our industrial era and local history. Most industrial ruins tend to be wiped clean, but I can see that there has been an effort to preserve some of that industrial history, so as to be able to tell its story.

You host a dinner party and can invite anyone – living or not, famous or not. Who would you want to see around that table?

I would love to have Henry Francis du Pont there, as well as his horticulture professor, Charles Sargent. I would also invite landscape designer Marian Coffin, as well as Charles Montgomery, Winterthur’s first director, and Gina Bissell, a long-time Winterthur board of trustee member. I would also invite my team, so that they could meet these people too.

What item can always be found in your refrigerator?

Ever since I was a kid, I have always liked tonic water and lemon. Every refrigerator I have ever owned has had a bottle of tonic water or quinine water in it.