Guillot on Landscape Design

No lunch dates full of uncomfortable mumbles around the bite in your mouth here -- the East Hampton Historical Society's In Conversation summer lecture and lunch will let others do the talking. At this year's installment to benefit the historical society, the designer David Netto will interview and chat with the landscape architect Perry Guillot next Thursday at 11 a.m. at the Maidstone Club.
    
The talk will be illustrated with photographs of a selection of Mr. Guillot's landscape architecture work. He is the  founder of Perry Guillot Inc. Landscape Architecture and has designed gardens for high-profile names such as Tory Burch and Aerin Lauder. The event is his first with the historical society; he was invited by Mr. Netto, as the two are good friends.
    
The event has offered Mr. Guillot the opportunity "to clarify my own work as a body of work going back 30, 35 years," he said. Throughout that time, he has been connected to the South Fork. Mr. Guillot started at a landscape architecture firm in New York that had projects in Southampton in the early 1980s. He then started his own office in 1991, designing projects worldwide. In 2006, he became a full-time Southampton resident. His firm is now based here as well, focusing on landscapes informed and designed around a location's cultural and environmental context. "I have a passionate understanding of the history of the East End, going back rather far," he said. 
    
Recently, Mr. Guillot designed the garden of the new Southampton African American Museum, which opened on Juneteenth of this year. He is excited to show his "love of the small towns and villages, and how my work has become a part of that landscape," he said. 
    
Tickets for the lunch and lecture start at $250 and are available by calling the historical society at 631-324-6850, extension 1. Online registration is closed. Proceeds will fund the maintenance and continuation of the historical society's collections, restorations, and exhibition projects.