A Health Center Designed Around Care and Connection
Kendal at Longwood Health Center is part of the Kendal-Crosslands Communities campus in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. The project is a major expansion and renovation of the existing Health Center, pairing renewed resident care spaces with independent living garden apartments and new outdoor areas designed to support comfort, mobility, and daily connection.
Integrating Landscape with a Reimagined Care Environment
RGS Associates supported the project through site design, land development, stormwater, and landscape architecture services, including courtyard and connected green space planning. The work reflects the central goal of the Health Center redesign to create a setting where community, nature, and care meet. Rather than treating outdoor space as leftover area around a building, the plan uses the landscape as part of the resident experience.
Courtyard Design for Everyday Use
The Longwood Health Center courtyard design creates a series of accessible outdoor spaces organized around movement, seating, planting, and gathering. The plan includes curved walks, lawn areas, cafe tables and chairs, benches, shade structure, planting beds, and a sculptural water element. These features help shape a courtyard that can support quiet time outdoors, casual visits, small group activity, and staff-supported resident use.
Connected Green Space Across the Campus
RGS also explored how the Health Center could connect more fully with the surrounding campus. The connected green space concept links the Health Center with nearby cottages, the 506 House, parking areas, meadow space, event lawn, and covered pathways. The site emphasizes accessible covered and uncovered paths, outdoor gathering areas, and better connections between the western side of the campus and activity spaces closer to the Health Center.
Coordinating the Technical Work Behind the Experience
Because the project is embedded within an active senior living campus, the design also required careful technical coordination. RGS led in coordinating preliminary and final land development plans, PCSM plans, erosion and sediment control plans, stormwater management reporting, lighting, grading, parking, sidewalk and ADA elements, waterline and sewer improvements, fire access, and construction cost coordination. These infrastructure improvements help the courtyard, pathways, and campus connections function safely and reliably over time.
A Landscape That Supports Well-Being
For Kendal at Longwood, the redesigned Health Center is intended to support personal care, skilled nursing, rehabilitation, resident care, and independent living. RGS’s work helps extend that mission outdoors. Through accessible circulation, intentional planting, gathering areas, and connections to the broader campus, the landscape gives residents, visitors, and staff more opportunities to move, pause, gather, and remain connected to the natural setting around them.
