Now in its third year, Caplan Rose, an East End travel company that organizes private tours of gardens and cultural destinations in rural England, has announced its summer 2019 excursions, which include Cotswolds Gardens: Contemporary English Designers and Visionaries of the Past.

The trip, which will take place May 7 through May 12, will range from the 17th-century Rousham Garden by William Kent to private gardens by the influential contemporary designers Arne Maynard, Dan Pearson, and Tom Stuart-Smith. The region is notable for its many medieval villages, rolling countryside, and iconic country houses. Guests will stay at a hotel that “combines traditional comfort with a modern urban twist and locavore cuisine,” according to the company’s website.

“The Cotswolds is an extraordinarily beautiful part of England,” said Emily Goldstein, co-owner with Katharine Battle of Caplan Rose. “For those who have been before, what is distinctive is that we bring people to private gardens they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. It’s a very personal experience. We take eight to 12 people, so a lot of detail goes into the selection of gardens every year. And the itineraries are always evolving, which makes it fun for us.”

Caplan Rose has organized two other excursions for 2019, one to Devon and Cornwall and one to Scotland. Both are fully booked. In addition, Ms. Goldstein and Ms. Battle are able to design itineraries throughout the United Kingdom tailored to the specific interests, dates, and budgets of private groups.

Ms. Goldstein has worked as a gallery director and private art adviser and in 2004 founded the Drawing Room in East Hampton with Victoria Munroe. Born in Scotland and educated in England, Ms. Battle lived and worked in England, Italy, and Mexico before moving to the United States in 1997. Both women live in Sag Harbor.

More information is available online at caplanrose.com.

Christmas is coming and garden shops and nurseries already have begun selling fir trees. You’ve seen them everywhere. For the most part, when the holidays are over they are allowed to dry out on firewood piles, used by municipalities to shore up dunes, or taken to the dump. 

Another trend, one more in keeping with sound environmental practice, is taking over on the East End, however. Instead of a tree felled by chain saw, homeowners are buying live trees with root balls intact to be used temporarily indoors and eventually set into permanent spots on their properties.  

Opting for a live Christmas tree requires some planning, however, and the experts were ready to give some advice.

 “For most people, the first concern is going to be the size and weight,” said Nikki Seelbach, a designer at Charlie and Sons Landscapes in Amagansett. “A traditional Christmas tree could have a root ball on it that weighs over 90 pounds.”

Marders in Bridgehampton sells Norway spruces, which Kevin Coffey, one of its tree experts, called one of the best performers on the East End. The trees, he said, average 6 feet tall, weigh about 200 pounds, and cost $249. The nursery also carries a 4-foot version, already in a container, for $149.

One of the drawbacks to having a live Christmas tree is the limited time it can be displayed indoors. “Trees are going into dormancy in the fall,” said Ms. Seelbach, so when placed in a heated home, “you’re basically bringing it back into summer time.” To protect the health of a tree, she said, “it should only remain in the house for 10 days.”

Before it makes it indoors, however, the tree should be allowed to slowly adjust to the temperature. “You should acclimate it in a garage or an intermediate space for two or three days before you bring it into your house,” Ms. Seelbach said. She added that once inside, a tree should be treated like an extra-large houseplant; the soil should remain wet, although the root ball should not sit in excess water.

Ms. Seelbach recommended thinking ahead if you plan to plant a live tree after the holidays. A hole for it should be prepared before the winter’s cold sets in, so that the ground will be soft enough for digging and someone able to carry heavy weights should be ready and willing.

“You want to dig a hole that is the same depth or even a few inches shallower than the root ball, and twice as wide,” she said. “Planting a tree too low is the quickest way to kill it.”

After the tree has spent the holiday indoors, it should return to the garage or shed for a few days to acclimate to the new temperature. Then it will be ready to be planted outdoors where, in a visible and attractive place, it can keep the Christmas spirit alive throughout the years to come.

When Barbara Toll, an art adviser and former gallery owner, sold her Sag Harbor house and moved into a two-bedroom condominium in the Watchcase factory in 2015, she was eager to give up the maintenance responsibilities that come with homeownership, but she wanted to retain some of the aspects of her former, beloved home. 

“In my house, there were lots of places you could go to read and be separate from guests, so I wanted to create as many private spaces in this apartment as I could,” she said. 

With more than 3,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor space, the ground-floor condominium in the Watchcase provided ample room to section off areas for alone time. The expansive kitchen-dining-living area, which has brick walls and 11-foot ceilings, offered a gallery-like setting for Ms. Toll’s art collection. It also features a vestige of the building’s origin in 1881 as the Bulova Watchcase Factory. “This arch, I’ve been told, was the workers’ entrance from the street,” she said, pointing to a heavy, curved piece of wood that frames one window.

Ms. Toll chose a large Leonardo Drew sculpture made of wood, found objects, and jersey fabric as a dramatic backdrop for the main living area, which has two restored Warren McArthur sofas from the 1930s. She said they “were designed to be porch furniture. Most of the upholstery in here is indoor-outdoor fabric. The idea was to keep the upkeep as simple as possible.” 

While making decisions about furnishings, Ms. Toll held firmly to a belief that the pieces had to be creative, but not at the expense of being practical. “I like design, and I like things to look functional. I don’t think there should be a conflict,” she said. 

For the kitchen, Ms. Toll commissioned Martino Gamper, a London artist and furniture maker, to create a hutch from recycled linoleum. “I wanted to have one thing that’s spectacular,” she said. Mr. Gamper’s initial rendering was insufficiently utilitarian, Ms. Toll said. “I really wanted it not to be sculpture.”  The compromise is an eye-catching work of craftsmanship that has easy-to-open drawers and ample storage. 

Finding the right dining table proved to be a challenge. After rejecting farmhouse-style options, she decided on an asymmetrical piece reminiscent of a paddleboard. “I knew I needed something very gutsy,” Ms. Toll said of her choice, which is a reproduction of a table by Charlotte Perriand, a French architect and designer. “This was a great solution.” 

A reading nook is built into a more private living area, one that contains a workstation and a television. “When I designed it, I thought of a railroad sleeping car,” she said. A plush cushion in the curtained alcove also allows it to serve as a separate sleeping space, and, in an artistic touch, Ms. Toll has covered the walls in fabric created by Hella Jongerius, a Dutch industrial designer. 

The one resident that is not always keen on being on his own in the apartment is Ms. Toll’s Norwich terrier, Sport. In her master bedroom, with its minimalist décor, the dog bed is strategically positioned on the floor. “I don’t know how I figured this out, but he needs it to touch my bed. He has this bed in three colors in three homes and it’s in exactly the same position.”

The perks of living in the Watchcase building, Ms. Toll said, include proximity to shopping in the village and a concierge desk where she can ask for help. “One night, I couldn’t open a bottle of wine, and I could run out and find somebody to do it for me,” she said

Ms. Toll owns a loft in New York City but enjoys using her Sag Harbor retreat throughout the year. “In the summer it’s a refuge from the sun, and in the winter it’s cozy.”

Universal Design, the design of products and environments suitable for everyone, from children to the elderly, is a term increasingly heard on the East End, where retirees continue to swell the population. Put simply, it is intentionally planning houses and public spaces to meet changing needs, design that allows “aging in place.” And it is happening here.

“Everyone is living longer, and it’s a reality that we haven’t really dealt with a lot here in the United States,” said the architect Andrew Reyniak, a Sagaponack resident whose firm, ARPAC, is based in New York City.

 “One of the sad things is Universal Design often gets cleaved off from design in general, and unfortunately, the only way that Universal Design usually enters a designer’s experience is through the Americans With Disabilities Act, and things that are built into code requirements. So you get these architects in school who say, ‘Oh, man, you mean I have to learn to deal with A.D.A. requirements?’ They fail to realize that Universal Design does not have to look like a handicapped room at a hotel where everything is oversized,” he said. 

Among the many good reasons to consider Universal Design is the data on the nation we have become, and the East End in particular. “It’s worth noting that Universal Design in America is not just driven by age or orthopedic disability — it’s increasingly driven by obesity issues as well. . . . People who require design features such as double-wide seating or lower beds because they’re obese,” Mr. Reyniak said.

A recent AARP study found that 89 percent of people 50 or older want to remain in their own homes indefinitely, and many are already preparing to age in place, even if it’s confined to retrofits such as adding a first-floor master suite.

Nick Martin of Martin Architects in Sagaponack said even when age is not yet a consideration, aging-in-place planning is appropriate. “What I’ve been noticing is there are a number of people in the 30 to 50-year-old zone who have moved their offices out here and are making their second home their primary residence now, and that’s been happening out here for about a dozen years,” he said.

When correctly done, Universal Design does not sacrifice aesthetics, whether people are challenged by hearing, sight, or mobility. Specifications such as curbless shower entrances and pullout cabinet drawers are helpful for children as well as the elderly, as are safety features such as non-slip floors, levers to open doors and cabinets rather than knobs, and wider hallways and doorways. A hand-held showerhead on a slide bar might replace one that is wall-mounted. 

  Barbara Feldman, an East Hampton interior designer, said that years ago, when she first began migrating from working on large health facilities to residences and made “Aging in Place/Universal Design” a specialty, many of her clients were rarely interested.

 “The way it does come out is in what things they ask me for,” Ms. Feldman said. “They want to make their homes places they can stay in as they get older. They want design that can adapt to them rather than force them to adapt to the design. They’re describing exactly what aging in place is.”

“I always believed that the environment has an impact on the healing ability, and even on just maintaining your health. People just feel better at home. They don’t want to go somewhere else. It’s emotional. It’s psychological. Even if you don’t have a challenge now, someday you probably will. It often has nothing to do with age. It could just be surgery, a broken leg, the unexpected. That’s why I tell people, ‘Universal Design is something that makes sense for everybody.’ It’s a win-win for all.”

Customers come from near and far and at this point the general manager of London Jewelers in East Hampton can often spot them the minute they walk in. They are almost always men, and when they look at the cases of glittering jewelry and watches and rings, they suddenly seem unsure they’re in the right place. Then, with a quick glance, they see “Humidor” in big letters on a glass door to the right and shelves of cigars inside a climate-controlled, walk-in room. 

Ed Dressler, the general manager, is effusive about the cigars London Jewelers carries. “It’s important to note they’re not just any cigars. They’re a Who’s Who,” he said, mentioning Ashton, Arturo Fuente, Davidoff, Camacho, Padron, and Dominican-made Cohibas.

There are cigars called Churchills because they resemble the long-lasting ones Winston loved to smoke. There are cigars with literary names meant as homage to famous writers. There are hard-to-find Opus Xs, the “Holy Grail of cigars‚” Mr. Dressler said, which are special because only a limited number are made each year, and London Jewelers is on the allotment list, with perhaps three boxes every four months.There is also a new brand made by the Hamptons Cigar Company, with a logo that spells out the word “Hampton” in nautical flags.

“I always ask guys when they come in, especially the first time, ‘How did you hear about us?’ and today it’s usually Google or word of mouth,” Mr. Dressler said. “There haven’t been any other walk-in humidors on the East End since we opened in 1996. We’re it. We’re lucky to be able to say these cigars are the best of the best. And we price them the way they should be. I keep the prices in here not just reasonable, but almost cheap.”

 The prices range from under $10 per cigar (or “stick”) to a high of $50. They’re sold individually, in gift packs, or by the box.

Mr. Dressler said in addition to the London Jewelers selection, customers come in “because they know the cigars are stored in perfect conditions that are hard to replicate at home. To wit: The humidor is always kept at 71 degrees, and 71 percent humidity. A mister occasionally emits little puffs of steam. The top and bottom walls of the room have rows of cedar-lined cigar “keeps‚” small personal storage lockers with discreet brass nameplates for some of the store’s most loyal clientele. Asked to name a few, he said Steven Spielberg, Alec Baldwin, Billy Joel, and the former National Hockey League star Pat LaFontaine.

Because Mr. Dressler orders all the stock, it is easy for him to help customers make selections, he said. He also is adept at explaining the particulars of the different cigars and how to smoke them. He can tell stories about how cigars are made: There’s the filler, the binder, and, on many cigars, a wrap called Connecticut Shade, a large-leaf tobacco that is grown under cheesecloth in the Connecticut River valley around Windsor.

 Mr. Dressler said he was happy to educate a newbie client on the proper way to cut a cigar or the recommended way to light one, which, he said, is to hold the flame under it until it lights rather than straight on.

According to Mr. Dressler, it’s also good to know cigars are meant to be puffed, not inhaled all the way. They’re also meant to be smoked in one sitting, which is why some cigars are described by how long they take to finish, not just their flavor.

And, like wine, the descriptions and reviews of cigars can be complex as well as imaginative. The website for Cigar Aficionado magazine describes its 2017 Cigar of the Year, the Arturo Fuente Don Carlos Eye of the Shark, as having a “range of baking spices and citrus notes‚“ as “intonations of nuts and leather unfold before a warm, lingering finish of cedar and cider.” The Padron Serie 1926 No. 2 marries power and grace, from its earthy core to its rich coffee-bean character, accented by a sweet, underlying woodiness and a black tea finish.

Phil Paroff, an East Hampton resident and regular London Jewelers customer, knows such descriptions exist, but he said with a laugh, “I do not have what you’d call a discerning palate. Oaky or buttery, I don’t know. I just know what cigars I like, and I don’t like.” 

Mr. Paroff said he first tried cigars in the early 1990s when he shared a summer house with a friend. “I like smoking cigars because it’s relaxing,” he said. “I was a type A personality before I retired, and back then it was especially nice for me,” he said. “You sit down for 40 minutes or whatever it takes to smoke your cigar, and do nothing. I get a nice cigar, I go outside, and I can sit there and watch the world go by.”

What she could possibly give her husband as a 25th wedding anniversary present was on Yusi Gurrera’s mind about a year and a half ago when she came up with a perfect solution. She would ask a friend who is a sculptor, James Grashow, who lives in Connecticut, to create something that would epitomize her husband’s main interest — fish.

Her husband is Joe Gurrera, who bought a small neighborhood fish shop called Citarella, which had been in operation since about 1912, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in 1983 and turned it into a multimillion-dollar business.

Mr. Gurrera was already in the fish business. He owned Lockwood and Winant, a wholesale seafood company in the Bronx, which had been in operation for more than 100 years. And he owned Meat Without Feet, as well, another wholesale fish supplier in the Bronx that sells to restaurants and hotels. The couple even named their cats for fish: Marlin and Minnow.

James Grashow sculpts in wood and cardboard and also does woodcuts. He calls what he came up with as a present for Mr. Gurrera a fleurarium, a cross between an aquarium and a garden (fleur is French for flower). He carved every piece from wood, even small wavy bits of sea grass reaching upward and tiny fragments at the bottom that look like soil. He also crossed jellyfish and mushrooms, naming them jellyrooms and painted varying colors behind the fish scales to produce subtle contrast. The finished product included groupers, snappers, and rainbow trout, all in crazy colors.

At the Gurrera home, the sculpture dominates the fireplace mantel. Mr. Grashow not only painted the base of the sculpture the same color as the stone mantelpiece, but built a slim black platform for it to effect a floating aspect.

The work includes flowers that seem to be metamorphosing into small eel-like creatures and very small fish that look like minnows, which are easy to overlook, as is a lone cricket on the seabed.

Using a pun, there was a potential catch: It did not seem likely that Mr. Grashow would be able to finish the sculpture in time for the Gurreras’ anniversary. The solution was a small-scale model as a placeholder.

“I didn’t want to be empty-handed on our anniversary,” Mrs. Gurrera said. “After all, my gift from him was to go to Lapland to see the aurora borealis. We stayed in glass igloos . . . and made our way through Scandinavia. We met with our seafood farmers in Norway and visited every food hall along the way . . . yum!”

In a nice turn of events, Mr. Gurrera was working on a book that has just been published, “Joe Knows Fish: Taking the Intimidation Out of Cooking Seafood.” Apparently it took him as long to write as it took Mr. Grashow to make the sculpture.

The Gurreras were at home, on their hard-to-find property in Bridgehampton, when Mr. Grashow and his wife, Guzzy, and a few friends drove up in a white van with signs on it that read: “Fleurarium.”

The Southampton Historical Museum will hold its annual Insider’s View house tour and benefit on Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m. Just shy of a decade old, the tour has become synonymous with access to some of the most famous and curiosity-inducing domiciles in Southampton.

Each year’s tour offers a sampling of summer colony styles, from a sprawling oceanfront pile to an intimate village cottage, with a building of historical or architectural significance in addition to everything in between.

The tour is self-guided and includes one of the museum’s properties, the Thomas Halsey Homestead, and St. Andrew’s Dune Church. After the tour, participants have been invited to a reception at 4:30 at the museum’s Rogers Mansion on Meeting House Lane.

Linden, designed by Grosvenor Atterbury, an early-20th-century summer resident of Southampton and the designer of the old Parrish Art Museum on Job’s Lane, is an 18,000-square-foot residence set on 10 acres. A grand hall and living area show off the building’s original millwork and tremendous fireplaces. The park-like property boasts mature trees, flowering shrubs, evergreens, rose gardens with both indoor and outdoor pools, and tennis and paddle courts.

The tour also includes the house that Capt. E. Halsey called home after his last whaling trip in 1848. It offers evidence of a historic dwelling being adapted to suit modern lifestyles while preserving its antique charm. A new light-filled and spacious wing offsets the cozy spaces of the older structure.

In the same tradition is Three Chimneys, a traditional 1927 village house. Updated in a way that respected its original details, the house has a pool, built-in cabinetry, and a pantry. The interior is bright and sunny, furnished with custom designer furnishings and antiques with a pastel and beachy palette.

A South Fork house tour would be poor indeed without at least one knockout waterfront residence. This year, a gabled house on Lake Agawam has a soft-gray exterior and a traditional pebbled drive leading to the house and the lake beyond. The decor revolves around family living, with plenty of outdoor seating and a game room within its otherwise tailored interior. 

The owners of a retreat in the woods took their modest house and renovated it to bring light and space inside by adding square footage, raising the master bedroom’s ceiling, and adding beams to the family room. The furnishings include an Art Deco chair and a stunning capiz-shell ceiling fixture. The grounds were leveled and planted to add a pool and outdoor lounge area surrounded by tall evergreens.

A well-edited selection of houses should always include one that’s a bit over the top. What the museum is calling a “pink charmer” seems to fulfill this role, with flights of whimsy not for the faint of heart. The two-story foyer features huge palm leaf wallpaper and a bespoke ceramic fireplace surround designed to match the wallpaper’s swag border. A grand living room and sunroom have references to roses and other flowers that surround the pool with its glamorous cabana.

Advance tickets, which can be purchased on the historical society’s website, are $95, or $110 on the day of the tour. They can be picked up or purchased at the Thomas Halsey Homestead at 249 South Main Street beginning at 10:30 a.m.

Erling Hope is a woodworker who has built exquisite cabinets and furniture for many years, and who has also built a specialized career creating liturgical altars and fixtures. About five years ago, he started tinkering with wood from a stand of trees on his property on the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, making fascinating little boxes with it. 

He uses as much scrap wood as possible in his work — locust, white oak, and sassafras — because he believes in being a responsible steward. “Today we must speak of form, function, and fairness,” he said recently. “How we make things expresses our values.”

Mr. Hope, who is also a visual artist, and rather slyly humorous, said that he treats his boxes — take it for what you will — with depleted cobalt 60 (a radioactive isotope), nutria musk (that is, the distilled scent of a web-footed furry rodent), and what he describes as pigmented “fey dust.” In other words, he wishes his treatment technique to remain a secret. 

“There is no more sustainable product than what these boxes are made of” is all he would concede.

As he experiments, small boxes have been joined by larger boxes in his workshop. “I’m trying to do high-end, low-key projects out here. I’m still honing the process. With every batch I make I’m finding new efficiencies.” 

Although patterns appear naturally in wood, he’s been fiddling aroun with imposed and added patterns. He uses a range of varnishes, from dead flat through semi-gloss. “Each color treatment has its own name, usually taken from a favorite 1980s song: ‘Whitey on the Moon,’ for instance, a haunting pattern of grays, comes from Gil Scott Heron.”

“Each piece has varying light-fastness, so some of them are more light-fast, and all of them are finished to a wear tolerance that is acceptable for commercial flooring. People can clean them with anything they use to clean a floor.” 

Mr. Hope said he avoids trade fairs because he fears someone will try to copy the process he uses for his boxes and do it poorly. The reason he has not applied for a patent is that it would require listing his ingredients, which he obviously does not want to divulge.

Mr. Hope, a self-described “skeptical person of faith,” is a member of the Society for the Arts, Religion, and Contemporary Culture and has presented academic papers on art, myth, and film. He was a pastoral clerk for three years for the 22-member Peconic Bay monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, whom he helped through a transitional period and to a new meeting place at the Wainscott Chapel. What he is not, however, is a simple maker of simple Quaker furniture.

And he hasn’t been undertaking liturgical projects of late, either. “I’ve worked with a variety of faith communities over the decades, and I didn’t have a problem with people believing different things, but that all changed after the election,” he said. “At a moment when we see the ugliest parts of the human project on parade, it seems important to sort of craft a blend of something that is beautiful and responsible.”

Mr. Hope calls his boxes “purkinje boxes” and likes to say that the wood he uses for them is purkinje board, coming from “the purkinje tree,” which he describes as “an introduced species from around the Caucasus.” If you Google the purkinje tree, however, you will not find any such genus. Instead, you will discover that this is actually an esoteric reference to an optic phenomenon in human retinas that doctors call a Purkinje tree: the fleeting dark reflection of a network of blood vessels that looks like the branches of a tree. A purkinje, in other words, is an illusion. 

“I’m attracted to complexity,” he said, with characteristic understatement and a twinkle in his eye. “That’s what makes me a terrible Quaker, because that’s supposed to be about simplicity.”

The 1970s, when I lived in a rent-controlled Columbia University apartment, were a cool time. Macrame and tie-dyed T-shirts were in, and we all seemed to gravitate toward avocado plants.

A few charming books came out at that time, which must have inspired us, and we embraced the concept: free trees. They never bore fruit, and they never would. Instead, it was all the rage to see who could get their guacamole to turn into a taller plant than the neighbor’s. At one time I had about 10 avocado plants in pots, which I gave away after about 10 years when I decamped. Maybe they’re still somewhere above 105th Street, being passed from apartment to apartment in the same building.

The technique for growing an avocado plant is really easy. First, decide to make something tasty with avocados. They go well with pink grapefruit, by the way, or stick to classic guacamole. 

Cut open the avocado and take out the pit. It will have a papery skin around it; wash the pit off and carefully remove the skin. (If that seems hard to do, don’t worry. It will slough off eventually after it dries. 

Then get three or four wooden toothpicks, preferably strong ones. Take a look at the photos. They show that the toothpicks are spaced evenly about halfway up the pit from the flat end. Next find an eight-ounce glass or mug and fill it with room-temperature water. (The toothpicks will keep the pit from submerging.) It’s basically that simple. 

You can put it in a window; a window in a kitchen is good because you are apt to be around to watch the progress. An avocado’s roots will sometimes not emerge. If they don’t, your pit may be a dud. However, don’t give up. Try a bunch of pits and be patient. Sometimes it takes months to get a hint of a root.

Once you see roots, you can hope that your pit will crack open at the pointy top to let the plant begin to grow. After four leaves have emerged, you will have to do the unthinkable: pinch back the next tiny leaves that emerge. This will make the plant stem stronger. 

One year, I had three duds and four successes, though one of those was puny and did not make it past the first four leaves. If you get to the leafy stage consider yourself successful. Plant the avocado in some nice soil and put it in a window with good light. It is unlikely that you will get four-foot tall avocado plants like we did in the ’70s but give it a try. Bon appetit and good luck.

Jason Norris may have a landscaping crew at his command, but that doesn’t mean he sits behind some particleboard desk, plastic hunk of phone pressed to his ear, staring into the half-distance as he lines up the next property for his Norris Organics guys to attack with spinning blades, shovels, rakes, and enough bags of mulch to dam a small river.

No, on the final Friday of a notably cold and wet April, he could be found alone in the spritzing rain, walking behind a mechanized overseeder across a throbbingly green lawn in his care off Crestview Lane in Sagaponack. To his right, the well-appointed estate. To his left, a view that not all that long ago gave onto dunes and beach grass now showed a phalanx of huge three-story houses, a veritable mountain range of wealth in defiance of the wild and encroaching Atlantic beyond.

Despite the long stretch of lousy weather, it’s been a busy spring, Mr. Norris’s crew of five spreading out across the South Fork, from Southampton to Montauk, six days a week on missions of, in his words, full property maintenance. 

“I’m one of the few NOFA-accredited organic landscapers,” he said of the Northeast Organic Farming Association, through which he completed a five-day program of study. So what does that mean, exactly, down in the dirt? For one thing, he said in the course of a brief chat under the shelter of a carport, the roar of the ocean a constant in the distance, “We re-incorporate all leaves — we use them in the mulch as part of our organic treatments.”

For another, while he tries to get all his clients to compost, “We make our own compost tea, an organic fertilizer. It’s a liquid with fish enzymes and molasses. It’s got a beneficial living bacteria that helps with grubs and helps with fungal disease.” Squid juice is one ingredient.

More broadly, “Three hundred and fifty million pounds of fertilizer go on lawns every year in the U.S.,” he pointed out, “but here, the toxin-free properties are some of the nicest properties in the Hamptons. The lack of synthetics does not affect the aesthetic look.” 

He used to surround himself with a different kind of green — the briny depths — on commercial fishing trips out of Montauk. “We’d go for tuna and swordfish for 30 to 50 days at a time, to the Grand Banks, all over.”

“It’s great to do when you’re young, but it’s rough, man.” After 22 years, “I couldn’t handle the lifestyle anymore. It was just too much on the brain and body.” 

His path to becoming a professional landlubber went through the doyenne of environmentally conscious landscape design hereabouts, Edwina von Gal, the founder of the Perfect Earth Project. Back when he was a one-man operation with a push mower and a pickup, she asked him if he wanted to mow her lawn, and she went on to introduce him around to acquaintances in need of a landscaper. He still maintains her property in Springs. “She’s been a real mentor to me,” he said. 

With long blond hair and a genial earnestness, like a Chip (“Fixer Upper”) Gaines who went into a somewhat less lucrative vocation, he’s 47 now, married, and has two young children. “They were a main reason for switching jobs,” he said. He started Norris Organics in 2014, “and it’s really blown up.” 

Now he lives a quiet, normal life in Springs. He even keeps bees in his backyard. In the off-season he’ll do some tree work, in the deep winter snowplowing and removal.

“One thing about organic landscapers, we’re not in competition with each other. We don’t want every house on the block to be a client. We just want every house on the block to be organic.”