Way back in 1999, I lived in the servants’ quarters of an “antique” cottage on a tiny one-way lane, hidden on the east side of Georgica Pond. As I worked as an architect from its hot, spidery second-floor apartment, I heard the rumblings of something going on next door. New construction. Should be interesting to watch, I thought.

I asked the foreman, who was from the Wright and Company construction firm in Bridgehampton, who the architect was, and he replied, “A woman from the city, Deborah Berke.”

 I didn’t think much of the ruckus next door as I had become considerably construction-numb as an architect. After the foundation was poured, however, I began to realize that what was being built was not a Shingle Style traditional or typical East Hampton beach folly. It was modern. And it was quite small by South Fork standards. 

Now mind you, this was well before the recent resurgence in modern houses had gained traction here. Many architects with a modern aesthetic were sitting idly in their offices, sketching ideas or working on competitions to keep their brains from deteriorating.

As the house next door progressed, I saw the volumes begin to take shape. The forms were firmly rooted in the landscape and very clearly defined. No applied trick facades. No flashy details. No exotic materials. Just shapes and shadows with a backdrop of local lush green. There was a beautiful modesty to this little house, which left me perpetually intrigued.

 At the time, I was moonlighting by doing drawings of a behemoth gambrel-roofed estate designed by a local architect. The detailing was elaborate, and as I drew corbels, coffers, and arches, I could see the construction progress next door from my window. 

I learned it was a “city” architect’s house. Interesting and ºout of the box‚ I thought. Eventually‚ I noticed a wall without a roof and an opening in it. Unusual, I thought; it made me think of Chinese architecture. A walled garden in East Hampton! 

One evening at sunset I entered the house and wandered around. (Yes, I trespassed, but for academic reasons.) The windows had gone in and light poured into the house at perfect angles. The space felt light and flexible. The details were so restrained. The house was thoughtful and gentle in the transitions from space to space. Effortless. 

Some architecture can appear clever or trendy in its modernism, but this architecture seemed honest, not trying too hard to be anything other than a calm and serene beach escape for a family. Ever since, I have followed Deborah Berke’s work enthusiastically. Her firm, Deborah Berke Partners, has persevered with a philosophy of honesty in both materials and design throughout the years. 

At a time when the East End modern design scene has reached a zenith of flash, high-end materials, and glitz, Ms. Berke is the real deal. Her exciting new position as the dean of the Yale School of Architecture is confirmation of her unwavering talent, consistency, and skill. 

Deborah Berke’s “House Rules: An Architect’s Guide to Modern Life,” a $45, fully illustrated book published by Rizzoli in July, is a clear and thoughtful explanation of her philosophy, which both design veterans and laypeople can easily grasp and put to use.

It is refreshing to find a design book with clear steps and insights into a particular architect’s process. The captions for the photos are helpful poetic summaries of the firm’s basic concepts, and the images explain those concepts in a straightforward way, which also is helpful. 

The book includes an essay about Fishers Island by Rick Moody, a novelist, and an afterword by Marc Leff, who has been with the Berke firm since 1993. In addition, an index identifies the houses where most of the photos were taken by their street names or locales, Georgica and Sagaponack among them.

Designing and building houses is a complex process and Ms. Berke’s book demystifies the architect’s process, while transforming it into a hands-on, methodical series of choices. She articulates eight guiding principles, and the book is organized around them.

According to Ms. Berke, “Make a virtue of economic necessity. Good design doesn’t cost more; expensive materials do.” And, “Movement into and through a house accelerates and collects, like a stream with eddies.” Many thoughts and useful ideas from this wonderfully readable book have stayed with me, as I hope many will with you.

Erica Broberg Smith is a practicing architect in East Hampton and New York. She also owns the Hampton Gather, a new antiques and salvage shop on Newtown Lane in East Hampton.

The work of Hans Hokanson, the Swedish-born sculptor who lived in East Hampton from 1961 until his death in 1997, is in many notable public and private collections, but a massive work that would be at home in a museum or a sculpture park such as the Storm King Art Center, where his other work is represented, has remained out of view in a secluded East Hampton house for 45 years.

Mr. Hokanson’s first sculpture dates from 1961, and his work was exhibited regularly in New York City and on the East End. In 1989, he began creating functional art — chairs, benches, beds, and tables. What links his sculpture and furniture is his mastery of wood and his gift for chiseling, gouging, blackening, or even burning the material. 

The massive work that has been seen only by the family who own the house it is in and their friends for the last 45 years is a spiral staircase, which straddles the sculptural and functional. Made of oak, some of which came from Pennsylvania, he installed the two-story-tall spiral in a barn in 1970 that was being converted into a residence.

 Confronted with a dilemma about the barn’s hayloft, which was accessible only by a ladder, the owners thought a metal spiral would be a terrible mistake in an old barn and decided to take a chance when a friend suggested they commission Mr. Hokanson to create one of wood.

 Although they gave him a photograph of a Shaker staircase as a model, Mr. Hokanson, who told a writer for House Beautiful magazine in 1993, “The wood speaks to me,” apparently heard something decidedly un-Shaker-like from the oak he used. The result, shocking at first, eventually pleased them. 

For most of its life, the staircase could only be seen from the living room, where it sat flush against a wall that separated that room from the kitchen. The wall was taken down last Thanksgiving and the staircase is now illuminated by natural light on all sides and can be seen in the round. Mr. Hokanson emigrated from Sweden to the United States in 1951, when he was 26. He settled first in California, where he did a variety of jobs, among them working as a construction carpenter on modern houses cantilevered off the Los Angeles hills.

In 1956 he moved to New York City, where he stretched canvases and built easels for the painter Mark Rothko, as a stage designer at the Living Theater, and as a technician at the Museum of Primitive Art. Five years later he came to East Hampton to do some carpentry for Willem de Kooning.

In a 1967 profile in The East Hampton Star written by the late Arthur Roth, Mr. Hokanson said, “I was with him for a while, but it didn’t work out. Then I found a place on Northwest Creek. If it hadn’t been for that, I wouldn’t have stayed out here. Place is very important to me. I was for six years on Northwest Creek. Beautiful.”

Though not quite as old as the spiral staircase, a house Mr. Hokanson later built in Northwest Woods for himself and his wife, Barbara, who died in 2007, was called by House Beautiful “his largest work in progress.” He also constructed most of its furniture.

Their son, Bengt Hokanson, and his wife, Trefny Dix, now live in the house. While the younger Hokanson assisted his father with woodwork and carpentry, he discovered glassmaking while a student at Tulane University and has made that his profession instead. Today, he and Ms. Dix operate HokansonDixGlass, and their work is represented in more than 40 galleries, museum shops, and high-end retail shops throughout the United States and abroad.

As for the staircase, because the sculptor used neither nails nor screws in its construction, its joints can expand and contract, and that means, if nothing or no one interfers, it will last as long as the wood does. 

Summertime is berry-picking time, and for those of us lucky to have berries in our gardens, it is also a time of challenges: getting to the ripened berries before the birds do, picking the berries before they rot or fall, and — in the case of the weekend gardener — remembering what weekend the berries will come in, so that we can clear our schedules and devote ourselves full-time to gathering them, processing them, and putting them up as jams for the coming year. One berry, however, makes all of this easy for me: the gooseberry.

Gooseberries — and a related berry, the red currant — have never achieved the popularity in the United States that they have in Europe, where both are hailed for their delicious flavor as well as for their performance in both garden and kitchen. They make exceptionally good jams, containing enough natural pectin that they require nothing more than the right proportion of sugar to achieve a good set, and both containing enough natural acidity that they will retain a fine, bright flavor long after canning. Both are easy to cultivate, too: They enjoy growing in part shade, are susceptible to only a few diseases, and are rarely eaten by birds or squirrels — unlike blueberries or strawberries, which can disappear at an alarming rate into the mouths of our appreciative local wildlife. Also, both gooseberries and red currants will stay on the bush for a very long time — so if you miss picking them one weekend, they will most probably be waiting for you the next.

Given all these fine attributes, you may wonder why gooseberries aren’t more popular. They were in the last century, but starting in the early 1900s their cultivation was outlawed in many parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic because they were found to host white pine blister rust, a killer of valuable white pine trees. (Only in 1966 did New York State rescind the ban, when new, non-rust-hosting cultivars of the fruits became available; but even today, the bushes remain illegal in parts of New Jersey and Massachussetts.) 

Another reason that gooseberries and red currants are not overly popular is that they are highly acid, and most people who sample them find them too sour. Finally, gooseberries are thorny, and red currants, though not thorny, are fragile, growing in long, delicate clusters that are difficult to harvest commercially. So if you want to enjoy these delicious berries — and to my mind, they are best enjoyed as jam — you’ll probably need to grow a few bushes at home. Luckily, doing so is not too difficult.

Gooseberries come in two types: American and European. American gooseberries are smaller, healthier, and more productive, while European varieties are larger and a bit less acidic. I have three kinds in my garden: Hinnonmaki Red and Pixwell, both of which are American, and Invicta, a European gooseberry that is said to be the best gooseberry available in North America, with larger, sweeter fruit. I purchased all three varieties locally at Lynch’s Garden Center in Southampton and can’t really tell the difference between them, except that the Hinnonmaki Red are a deep ruby red, while the others are a very pretty chartreuse. I have several varieties of currants — including red currants, white currants, and black currants — but I would only recommend red currants, specifically the cultivar “rovada,” which is agreed to be the best available. Black currants have a foxy, almost unpleasant taste, and don’t seem to me to make good jam, while white currants, just as tasty as red, lack the brilliant, jewel-like color that makes red currant jam so visually appealing.

Both red currants and gooseberries like a moderate soil pH (6.0 to 6.5) that is moist and well drained. They need good air circulation to avoid fungal diseases, so place them (and prune them) accordingly. While mildew has occasionally been a problem for me, the greatest enemy of both my gooseberries and my red currants are sawfly larvae (also known as currant stem girdler), which, should they find their way to your bushes, will appear for only a week or so per year — but during that brief window of time they can eat all the leaves on a bush. These wriggly, wormlike little pests can be controlled, however, through vigilant removal of leaves bearing their eggs or (in the midst of an infestation) prompt application of insecticidal soap. Squishing them with your fingers can also be a fast, effective, and highly satisfying way of ending an infestation, but that is not for the faint of heart.

Gooseberries are quick to pick because the berries are large, firm, and easily stripped from the bush. Once you have them in the kitchen, you need simply wash them before placing them in a heavy pot for initial processing. To do so, place a small amount of water in the bottom of the pot to keep the berries from burning or sticking, and then heat the berries until they burst, using a potato masher if you like to hurry the process along. Once the berries have turned into pulp, put the mass through a food mill, discard the solid matter, and use the remaining fruit puree in whatever recipe suits you. Red currants are treated the same way. Here is a very basic recipe for making a jam of either.

Click for recipe

Justin Spring is a writer whose most recent book, “Secret Historian,” was a finalist for the National Book Award. He divides his time between Bridgehampton and New York. This piece is the second in a series.

Combine equal weights of fruit puree and sugar in a large heavy pot, one that allows several inches of headroom between the mixture and the top of the pot.

Cook the mixture over medium-high heat until the sugar is dissolved.

Bring the mixture to a rolling boil. Let it remain at a rolling boil for five minutes undisturbed. Keep an eye on the mixture to make sure it does not boil over. If it seems like it might do so, stir it down and then decrease the heat so it does not.

After the mixture has boiled for a full five minutes, turn off the heat and skim off any foam.

Carefully ladle the hot jam mixture into clean, sanitized jam jars. Screw the lids firmly onto the jars and invert them. After ten minutes, turn the jars right-side up. Let the jam cool, then refrigerate. 

Refrigerated, this jam will keep for up to one year. Should you wish to can your jams using the boiling-water method, which will preserve them for several years unrefrigerated, you can find guidelines for doing so on the National Center for Home Food Preservation website, or, alternately, in the classic textbook on home canning, “Putting Food By” (New York: Plume, 2010).

What’s the point of having the luxury of a long view into the garden if it’s blocked by a conventional flower border?

This conundrum illustrates that the tension between change and tradition, being manifest in all aspects of society, is playing out even in gardening and garden design. 

For more than 100 years, the English tradition of outdoor rooms, usually created by interlocking tall hedges hiding secret gardens that slowly reveal themselves and their surprises, has dominated garden design. Through books, magazines, and visits to English gardens, it has influenced the way many of us envision what a “proper garden” is. In recent decades the trend toward naturalistic plantings has gained momentum, perhaps because so much of the natural environment has given way to development, even here on the East End.         

Through the work of Piet Oudolf, at Millenium Park in Chicago and the High Line in New York, and other designers, prairie gardens have garnered a steady stream of publicity in the media. A sort of drip, drip, drip of Chinese water torture is finally changing the perception of gardens by a large public, and more of us are ready to put our toes in the water of naturalism, if not towering grasses.

This is a rather long introduction to the story of the flower border on the far side of Vincent Covello and Carol Mandel’s swimming pool in Sag Harbor.

Originally, and for many years, it was a long border of tall perennials, the fourth wall to a garden room enclosing the pool area. The house, with an overhanging porch, parallels the pool and border, with a pool house at one end and dense ornamental trees at the other. Relaxing poolside, the colorful flowers were a distraction and kept out the wider world.

Beyond the flower border the land slopes off into an area filled with tall oaks and masses of mountain laurel. For years Mr. Covello has been developing a dense groundcover of native ferns under the trees, every year breaking up the clumps until ferns now extend nearly as far as the eye can see. Especially when sunlight filters through the tree canopy, the area assumes a fantastical quality that was heightened when a Chinese bridge was added a couple of years ago.

So near, but yet so far. Following the tenets of traditional garden design, the view into the woodland was blocked. To savor its pleasures, you needed to find the path leading out of the pool area to the top of the hill.

For several years now, the Covellos have been experimenting with what we call transparency. It involves pruning trees and shrubs to enable you to see through their trunks to catch glimpses of what lies beyond, while giving greater depth of field to the view. I first came upon the idea of transparency while visiting Le Vasterival, the garden of the late, great, gardener Princess Greta Sturdza, in Normandy. 

She died at age 93 some years ago, but she influenced many of the younger gardeners in her area, and one of them illustrated the concept in his garden and passed it along to me on a sunny Saturday in June a few years ago.

Much to my pleasure, the idea resonated with the Covellos. They took it to heart and have run with it. (My last column told how they limbed up the trees n the woodland outside their kitchen window, planting it with large swathes of shade-loving plants to give the feeling of a tumbling golden river.)

It isn’t much of a leap from opening glimpses of a view to opening the entire view. Out went the tall perennials and in their place went Mexican feather grass, its glistening beige blades dancing in the slightest breeze. 

Interspersed in the clumps of grass is bright orange butterfly weed, with low-lying orange and pink lantana along the edges of the flower bed.

Now, whether the Covellos are in the pool or relaxing nearby, their eyes stop to digest the bright orange amid the low graceful grasses in the foreground, and then move on into the shaded hillside, with its tall oak trunks anchored by a lush carpet of dark-green ferns.

Think about your own garden. Is there a view that might be opened up to make a refreshing, easy change? Is there an overgrown Kousa dogwood or other tree that is obscuring the rhododendron behind it? Prune the dogwood to reveal its beautiful mottled bark and the tree’s structure. Seeing the rhododendron flowers is a bonus. 

In my own garden I’ve pruned the trunks of the clethra near the edge of the garden to give glimpses into the rear. In May, the purple of phlox carpeting the woodland floor carried 100 feet into my garden room and was followed in June by a bright pink mountain laurel along the property line.

Gardens are not stage sets, they are always changing. Open your eyes, and perhaps the view; respect tradition and embrace the new. You and your garden will be the better for it.

Mile-a-minute vine has established a foothold in East Hampton. It grows six inches a day and 20 feet in one season, can smother and kill anything in its wake, and can even cover phragmites, itself a rapacious invasive weed. Unlike other invasive plants, it would be fairly easy to contain or eliminate manually and with biological controls, if only we had the will and organization.

Dr. Andy Senesac, the weed science specialist at Cornell Cooperative Extension in Riverhead, says the problem has become much worse in our area since the devastation from Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Mile-a-minute first arrived in Nassau County back in the late 1990s, after working its way north from its original release at a nursery in southeastern Pennsylvania in the 1950s or early ’60s. By 2005 it was reported on the North Fork.

I had been only dimly aware of it. All it took was two small seedlings germinating in different parts of my own garden to bring it front and center to my consciousness. It’s odd that I knew immediately what they were, although I don’t recall ever seeing a photo.

Subsequently, I’ve seen the vine along the roadside in a wooded area farther out in Springs and in one or two other gardens. More alarming, it is becoming established in areas on Hook Pond, and two weeks ago I saw a nightmare infestation in a sunny open area on Buckskill Road across from Dune Alpin. That’s what made me phone Dr. Senesac to learn how bad it is on the East End and what, if anything, can be done to eradicate it.

Mile-a-minute is an annual vine native to Japan and China, Southeast Asia and India. It has light-green triangular leaves growing on narrow pink stems with recurved barbs that account for its other common name, Devil’s-tail tearthumb. It invades and becomes established in a wide variety of habitats, open and disturbed areas like fields, wetlands, forest edges, and roadsides.  Unfortunately, deer do not touch mile-a-minute vine, eating native plants instead. That encourages mile-a-minute to become superdominant, Dr. Senesac says.

It germinates here in early April and has weak roots, making it easy to pull. Because of the shape of the prickles, the young vines grow straight upright. He recommends manually pulling young vines in May and June, but cautions to wear long sleeves and gloves; the prickles can break in the skin and are difficult to remove. Early in the season, vines can be left where they’ve been pulled, put on the compost pile, or taken to the dump. 

By mid-August the fruit begins to ripen and turn bright blue. The ripe fruit falls off the vines easily and scatters widely, so from then on it’s not good to remove it. Mark the spot and return in May to clear the area.

Seeds can remain viable in the soil for up to five years. They can be spread over long distances by birds. Water, too, is an important way the vine spreads, as its fruit remains buoyant for seven to nine days, according to the State Department of Environmental Conservation.

An entomologist from the University of Delaware went to China in the early 2000s and found about 100 different insects feeding on mile-a-minute vine, keeping it in check. Of those, a weevil (Rhinoncomimus latipes) has passed tests from the U.S.D.A. and other government agencies in the United States. The adult weevil chews the leaves and lays its eggs on the vine. It takes a while to build up a population that can control the infestations. 

A few thousand weevils were released on the North and South Forks before funding ran out. Dr. Senesac continues to monitor those sites and track new infestations. He is hoping for a grant to enable him to purchase and release more.

At this point, home gardeners can easily control the odd vine that lands on their property, and sharp-eyed citizens can pull individual vines from the roadside. Manual pulling isn’t realistic for larger infestations. In some places the D.E.C. and the Nature Conservancy have partnered with local organizations and volunteers to clear areas.

Dr. Senesac told me the rearing lab charges $1 per weevil, with about 250 to 500 needed for an initial release. (They come in a box the size of a small ice cream container.) Reservations are taken beginning in early March. While the best time to release them is May and June, they remain effective until early August. Results wouldn’t be seen until the following year.

Unlike other invasives like knotweed, phragmites, and porcelain berry, controlling mile-a-minute vine is possible, and even easy.

Strawberries With Whipped Cream

An hour before they are needed, wash, hull, and slice the strawberries into halves or quarters. Toss a quart of the sliced strawberries with a half a cup of sugar (or to taste), along with an ounce of kirsch (optional). At serving time, whip one cup of chilled heavy cream in a chilled bowl, adding two tablespoons of sugar and a half-teaspoon of vanilla. Serve the berries and pass the whipped cream separately, with an accompaniment of shortbread or butter cookies.

A forest glade with a thick carpet of ferns, etched in dappled sunlight cast by the shade of trees, has been a recurring dream since I first saw the island bed by Hollis Forbes’s driveway in East Hampton. 

It is only a simple and small space, with three American hollies underplanted with Christmas ferns, created to shield the view of the drive from her front door. But it illustrates how the right groundcover can transform a planting from simple to memorable.

The decision to mass Christmas ferns was inspired. The fronds are dark green, with an architectural shape bold enough to hold their own against the glossy leaves of the hollies. The plant is evergreen, remaining upright through much of the winter, and it doesn’t need to be cut back until March, just beforethe new fronds emerge. Of equal importance, it is a clump-former rather than a runner, reducing maintenance in an enclosed space.

We look to groundcovers to suppress weeds, but they can and ought to do far more. Especially in shady areas, broad swathes of plants of contrasting textures and varying shades of a single color can weave a tapestry that is beautiful as well as functional.

As I was mulling over this idea, I visited Chanticleer in Wayne, Pa. What did we see: A large wooded area underplanted with alternating masses of soft green hostas and darker green-leafed hardy begonias, almost as far as the eye could see. The matte foliage of the begonia, with its jagged edges, accentuated the puckered round leaves of the hostas.

In other areas at Chanticleer, fine-bladed sedges (grass relatives, for shade) were massed at the edges of shrub borders for a naturalistic feeling.  

A word of caution, however: Choose your sedges (carex) carefully. At the Native Plant Garden in East Hampton, a spreading species was planted in the central mound toward the rear. It looks beautiful, especially now that the butterfly weed is in full flower, but it is the devil to maintain. It spreads relentlessly across the path and requires more strength than I have to clear it away every spring.

On the other hand, two types of clump-forming sedges were planted at the entrance to the grass garden at LongHouse 11 years ago and they still look good.  Planted densely, the effect is similar visually — they keep down the weeds, and you don’t have the nasty job of containing them in limited space every year.  One, Carex Velebit Humilus, creates a low mound of green with narrow blades, and the other, C. Silk Tassel, about a foot high with thread-like foliage, is a long-lived alternative to Mexican feather grass. There is an ever-growing list of clump-forming evergreen sedges from which to choose.

An imaginative use of groundcovers in shades of soft yellow and green is bringing the illusion of brightness, if not actual sunshine, into what had been a dark view of the woods from Carol Mandel’s kitchen window in Sag Harbor.

Facing west, the wooded area slopes downward, with an enclosed garden room at the bottom. The trees were limbed up and the hillside cleared just enough to see hints of the garden. She and her husband, Vincent Covello, selected three soft yellow plants of different textures to play off one another: variegated Japanese forest grass (Hakone­chloa macra Aureola); a medium hosta, Gold Standard, and a soft yellow heuchera. The hakonechloa dominates, and next summer, after the plants knit together, the hillside will seem like a golden river tumbling downward.

On the shady western side of my garden, I too used plants with yellow foliage to brighten an otherwise dull area. The groundcover golden creeping Jenny, Lysimachia nummularia Aurea, glows like molten gold when the sun finally reaches it in the afternoon. It accentuates the colors in the leaves of a golden full-moon maple and dwarf Hinoki cypress with lace-like golden needles, while the purple leaves of Euphorbia Chameleon pop against the golden groundcover.

Two other groupings of groundcovers in my garden are working out well. In one, three cultivars of Japanese painted fern with different dominant color combinations (all green, mostly silver and mostly maroon) form a mosaic, showcasing the huge white mopheads of Annabelle-type hydrangeas and large hostas.

The second combines the fine foliage of sweet woodruff with the bold, wide blades of Carex siderosticha Variegata. Growing under Virginia cedars and in front of osmanthus, it seems an idealized forest floor. Sweet woodruff grows rapidly, but because its roots run just under the surface, it is easily controlled.

There is more to groundcovers than pachysandra and English ivy. Carefully selected, they can be the ultimate accessory to elevating a planting to a thing of beauty.

For the first time since they were planted in 1982, there will be no blue mophead hydrangeas flowering on my front lawn this year. And I’m afraid I will not be alone.

Travelling throughout our area, you notice dry sticks protruding above the new foliage of this icon of beach communities in the Northeast. These dead or weakened sticks are the stems of last year’s growth, off of which this year’s flowers grow. Without them, there will be few, if any, mopheads this summer.

This past winter appears to have been more difficult for hydrangeas than the winter of 2014, with its extended period of deep cold and a single cold snap in April that put paid to most of last summer’s flowers. As I recollect, earlier this year we experienced at least three cycles of very warm weather when plants broke dormancy, followed by cold spells that fried open flowers and killed soft wood.

After two bad seasons, I am seriously considering pulling the mopheads by the street, together with my favorite, the lilac hydrangea Ayesha, that didn’t make it. But then again, this is the first time in 34 years that this has happened. Odds are it’s worth waiting another year before resorting to a drastic solution.

Dennis Lemonius, of the family that owns Buckley’s garden center on the Montauk Highway and the wholesale yard in East Hampton Village, tells me he is gaining new respect for the repeat-blooming Endless Summer hydrangea. “It’s come through the past two seasons in much better condition than that old favorite Nikko Blue,” he says.

Endless Summer, with blue mopheads, was a breakthrough in hydrangeas with its ability to flower on both the previous season’s woody stems and the current season’s new growth. It has been joined by Blushing Bride, with white semi-double flowers that mature to a soft blue; Twist-n-Shout, the first re-blooming lacecap, and the newest, BloomStruck, that has very strong red-purple stems and purple mopheads.

I’ve counted at least 11 other mopheads and lacecaps that are said to be re-blooming, and the list grows longer each year. They tend to be grown by huge commercial growers like Monrovia and marketed by organizations like Proven Winners. Those who al ready are growing any of the re-blooming hydrangeas will have flowers this summer, but they will bloom later, on the new growth.

I personally have no experience growing any of them and am always skeptical of anything that is marketed as the biggest or the best. In my own garden, where I experiment with many different types of plants, I’ve learned to cut my losses, and am grateful to have the room to try something new. That’s part of what makes gardening so interesting. Why not give these new hydrangeas a try? They might actually live up to the claims on the labels.

One that caught my eye is Seaside Serenade, a Cape Cod re-blooming hydrangea, only because I was raised on the Cape and that’s where I learned to associate hydrangeas with the beach. It grows to about four feet.

Many of the other re-bloomers are compact, growing two to three feet high.  There are five different cultivars in the Let’s Dance series. These would be good for the front of a planting area or in containers. Mr. Lemonius is encouraging me to try Tuff Stuff, a small, compact blue lacecap.

Of the eight different varieties of mophead/lacecap hydrangeas in my garden, the one that came through in best condition is Blue Bird, a Japanese mountain hydrangea. It is covered with small, bright, neon-blue lacecaps, generally beginning in mid to late June. An old classic that is not a re-bloomer, its flowers gradually transition to a bright ruby, giving the bush the appearance of a second flowering later in the summer. The leaves, too, turn red in autumn.  

The other popular species of hydrangeas flower on new wood, so are not affected by erratic weather and late cold spells, but the flowers are white or white tinged with pink. The native oakleaf and Annabelle-type smooth hydrangeas haven’t missed a beat, and may, in fact, be opening as you read this.

If you want to make an impact, it is hard to beat a mass planting of Annabelle — which, sadly, flops. An alternative newish cultivar with stronger stems, called Incrediball, is planted just inside the gate to the Mimi Meehan Native Plant Garden, beside Clinton Academy on East Hampton Main Street, where it only gets morning sun and makes a strong statement. In my garden the bushes are in full sun, and the huge size of the mopheads is truly incredible. Is it just a little too flamboyant? Who cares?

So here are the choices. Play the odds, keeping your old bushes and letting the new growth set the scene for next year’s flowering. After all, this has been a once-in-30-years event.

Or, put your toe in the water and give one of the new repeat-blooming hydrangeas a try. Or, visit the native plant garden in another few weeks to see how you like Incrediball. You might decide to give it a go.

All Durell Godfrey ever wanted in a career was an “art job,” one that would place her among the creative people she considered members of her “tribe.” That’s what she hoped for when she graduated in 1964 from Endicott College in Massachusetts, and that’s how it turned out.

After a brief attempt to live and work in Boston, where she was told that art studios didn’t like to hire women, Ms. Godfrey won a coveted job in New York City as an illustrator for Glamour magazine, a job she enjoyed for 31 years. 

Now a longtime contributing photographer for The Star, Ms. Godfrey said charm is the word she likes most to describe her style. Over the years her illustrations have been seen in Glamour magazine’s travel guides, fitness columns, and “Sticky Situation of the Month.” She incorporated the fashions and hairstyles of the time and would sometimes put herself, her friends, or even her cat into a scene.

Fast forward to March 2015, when a friend and East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society colleague showed her an article from The New York Times about a Scottish woman who had created a groundbreaking coloring book for grown-ups. “I can do that,” she thought, and she has. Calling on one of her contacts in the publishing world, she seized the opportunity. Two weeks later, she had signed the deal.

“Color Me Cluttered,” due out on Dec. 8 from Penguin Random House, features everyday scenes from much-loved, thoroughly lived-in houses. Awaiting its audience of adults are 40 line drawings, and Ms. Godfrey recommends colored pencils or markers as the medium.

Among its pages is a clothes dryer bursting open with socks, linens, and other washables. Jewelry spills over the sides of the drawers of a dressing table. A work desk is piled with papers and pens, and notes are taped to the windows and walls. In a kitchen, plates, cups, and food have been left all over the place. Simply put, Ms. Godfrey wants people to relate to, and enjoy, her work.

“Flipping through it, they will be engaged,” Ms. Godfrey said. “They will be involved with who lives in this room. They have been in a room like that or know the person who lives there. Maybe they want to tidy up that room.”

“Color Me Cluttered” is full of domestic charm, although it won’t be the kind of aesthetic you would find in a house that’s been staged here for sale.

“I think things that are tidy are not fun to look at,” Ms. Godfrey said. “Messy is much more interesting to draw.”

 “Color Me Cluttered” is among a growing number of books meant not for tots but for their parents. Among more than 7,000 Amazon.com listings are meditative mandala books, flowers and butterflies, landscapes and seascapes, holidays, and at least one with pictures that stoners might find appealing.

Some of the adults buying these books are frazzled folks who are heeding the advice of psychologists who recommend coloring as therapeutic.  Dr. Ben Michaelis, the New York City-based author of “Your Next Big Thing: Ten Small Steps to Get Moving and Get Happy,” recently told The Huffington Post that “a specific and repetitive activity” such as coloring “increases your focus and activates portions of your parietal lobe, which are connected to your sense of self and spirituality.”

Ms. Godfrey worked on her book for about five weeks in the spring this year, producing 75 drawings. The publishers had asked for 60, but she just kept going. 

Almost immediately after they were submitted, Ms. Godfrey’s husband, John Berg, fell ill, and she began focusing on his care. Mr. Berg died in October. Ms. Godfrey said the support of her artistic tribe of friends and colleagues, along with the coming release of “Color Me Cluttered,” has helped her move on.

“This gave me something to look forward to. I’m sorry I can’t share it with him, but he looked at all of the drawings I did as I was doing them,” she said. “It helped me focus on the future instead of dwelling on my loss.”

The coloring book has also represented a career rebirth of sorts for Ms. Godfrey. She said the book was able to get her “back into the groove” she had when illustrating for Glamour.

During an interview in her studio, as she fiddled with a light box she has had since the 1970s, which still works perfectly, she said, “I’m 70 years old. I didn’t expect to have sort of a new career path. It’s totally gratifying . . . and I’m really, really lucky.”