Parrish Offers Views On Architects and Landscapes
Not all summer benefits in the Hamptons are about lavish meals and seeing and being seen. The fund-raising calendar is studded with garden tours, house tours, and other events of a more enlightening nature.
One of them, Landscape Pleasures, the annual horticulture event staged by the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, has added a program to its usual agenda. “Inter-Sections: The Architect in Conversation,” a new series of discussions focused on building and designing for a sustainable future, will take place tomorrow at 6 p.m. The Landscape Pleasures symposium is set for Saturday from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and a self-guided tour of private gardens in East Hampton and Water Mill will take place on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Tomorrow’s program, “Landscape Architecture and the Environment: The Aesthetics of Sustainability,” will feature Chris Reed, founder of the landscape firm Stoss and a professor of landscape architecture at Harvard, and Alex Matthiessen, the president of Blue Marble Project, an eco-political consulting firm. The talk, which is open to the general public, is free for members, $12 for nonmembers.
The Saturday morning symposium consists of lectures by three renowned figures in the field of garden and landscape design. Page Dickey, a garden designer and writer, will discuss her favorite gardens. Ms. Dickey has written seven books and countless articles for House & Garden, House Beautiful, Elle Decor, and Garden Design, among others. She is the editor of “Outstanding American Gardens,” a celebration of 25 years of the Garden Conservancy.
Christine Ten Eyck, a landscape architect, will discuss the beauty of Texas and the Southwest. Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, based in Austin, illustrates the capacity for “place-based” landscape architecture to address such global issues as climate, habitat, and water quality protection while creating outdoor environments that foster social interaction and healing.
Chanticleer, a 48-acre garden in Wayne, Pa., will be the subject of a talk by R. William Thomas, who first arrived there in 2003 after 26 years at Longwood Gardens in nearby Kennett Square. He emphasizes an environmentally sensitive and multicentury approach to the development of the 24-year-old garden. Mr. Thomas is chairman of Greater Philadelphia Gardens and co-author of “The Art of Gardening.”
On Sunday, ticketholders can visit the Listowel Garden in Water Mill, the garden of Deborah Nevins in Springs, Arne and Milly Glimcher’s garden in East Hampton, and, also in East Hampton, Grey Gardens, immortalized by the Maysles brothers’ documentary and a Broadway musical.
Tickets to the benefit are $225, $175 for museum members, and include admission to the symposium, the garden tour, and the Friday evening “Inter-Sections” program. Those who purchase tickets at the sponsor level, $400, are invited to a private cocktail reception at the estate of Louise and Leonard Riggio in Bridgehampton on Saturday. Holders of benefactor tickets, which are $1,000, can attend a Saturday afternoon brunch hosted by Veronica Atkins, a Parrish trustee.