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 outdoor areas designed to support comfort, mobility, privacy, 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. Rather than treating outdoor space as leftover area around a building, the plan uses the landscape as part of the resident experience, connecting care, nature, and everyday campus life.
Layered Courtyard Design for Privacy and 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, a shade structure, and planting beds.
The design also places careful emphasis on the relationship between private resident areas, common walkways, and larger community gathering spaces. Patios, paths, seating areas, and courtyard spaces are organized as a layered sequence rather than a single shared outdoor room. Purposeful screening, indirect access, and controlled sight lines help define distinct areas within the landscape, allowing residents to maintain a sense of privacy while remaining connected to the broader campus environment.
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, an 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 helped coordinate preliminary and final land development plans, PCSM plans, erosion and sediment control plans, stormwater management reporting, lighting, grading, parking, sidewalk and ADA elements, utility improvements, fire access, and construction cost coordination. These infrastructure elements support the more visible courtyard, pathway, and landscape improvements, helping them 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, layered spatial design, 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.
