After viewing historical photos of Town Pond, East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen and the village board invited Ed Hollander, a landscape architect, to talk to them on Friday about improving both the pond’s appearance and its water quality.
“I must say this is the first time I’ve been in front of a village board when I haven’t been in trouble for something,” Mr. Hollander began, smiling.
“Town Pond is a body of water surrounded by fertilized turf that is a drainage area,” he continued. “It could be improved, let’s say.”
“We talked about creating a flowering pollinator garden around the pond that would accomplish several goals. It would help to filter runoff before the stormwater reaches the pond, and will also provide seasonal beauty and valuable habitat for birds, butterflies, and other pollinators.”
Surfrider’s Blue Water Task Force has tested the pond water 16 times in the past year. Eighty-one percent of the samples, it found, met water quality standards set by the State Department of Health. In August and September, the pond tested high for enterococcus bacteria.
Mr. Hollander provided a general concept plan, noting that many details could be worked out later. A variety of colorful plantings would encircle the pond, hugging the shoreline. A couple of spots would remain grassy, to allow a pathway to the water, but much of the pond’s edge would be full of color and plants. Not addressed was the area north of the pond, toward the Village Green.
His plant choices depended on the distance to the pond’s edge and the water saturation of the soil, he said. For the wettest areas, directly on the water’s edge, he mentioned swamp milkweed, pink turtlehead, wild indigo, hardy hibiscus, and two varieties of cardinal flower. Farther up the slope, he said, he would plant two varieties of yarrow, bee balm, black-eyed Susan, and purple coneflower.
Sarah Amaden, a board member, asked if the village would be responsible for the maintenance of the garden, and if the plantings would encourage weeds.
Mr. Hollander did not answer directly. “It seems like something that we could get town C.P.F. funds for the installation, since it will improve water quality,” he said. “Any new planting, no matter how native, there’s some initial maintenance. As it grows in, it should maintain itself.”
Ms. Amaden also wondered how it would look in the winter.
“We tried to pick plants that will look good all year round,” Mr. Hollander said. “You’d leave it up in the winter, and in early spring it all gets mowed down.”
“When would planting take place?” asked Mayor Larsen. Assuming funding came in, Mr. Hollander hoped it could all be in by the spring of next year. If they missed that window, he said, then not until the fall.
“Those are the windows we should be planting. The more we work with Mother Nature, the easier it is for the village.”
Gloria Frazee, an East Hampton Village resident and a member of ChangeHampton, a group dedicated to restorative landscaping, asked Mr. Hollander what percentage of the plantings would be native. She also hoped there would be an “educational component” to the installation, urging that local students help with the planting.
“We haven’t been strictly native,” Mr. Hollander replied, but “native-adaptive” plants would be used otherwise. The exact varieties would “be worked out as we move forward with this.”
In an email to The Star, Mr. Hollander wrote, “If we look for plants that provide the most ecological benefit instead of just strictly native, we can ensure that we have a planting palette that will thrive in the current conditions. The goal of the Town Pond Pollinator Meadow Plantings is to create a landscape that is low maintenance, aesthetically beautiful, and ecologically beneficial.”
After Mr. Hollander concluded his presentation, Mayor Larsen had some kind words for a Star staffer. “Durell Godfrey, a local photographer who works for The Star, sent me all these beautiful photos of the way the pond used to look,” he said. “She really is the one who came up with the idea. I think it’s a great project and is going to look really beautiful.”
“I’m so delighted the village is making a commitment to native plantings,” said Edwina von Gal, founder of the Perfect Earth Project, over the phone, after looking at the initial plan. She recommended that the village “consider the part that’s going to provide the greatest ecosystem services and play the biggest role cleaning the water going into the pond,” by connecting the Village Green bioswale near Guild Hall to the pond’s north end.
“Reducing the lawn there and connecting it to the bioswale would be ideal,” she said. “It’s currently filling up with mugwort. If that mugwort isn’t addressed, it will move right into the new plantings.”
The board was also busy on Friday with a public hearing, another discussion, and several resolutions that might affect village residents.
Members voted unanimously against planting red cedar trees along a strip of village land that separates town-owned land and a private residence from the Main Beach parking lot.
“Every board member had an opportunity to go look at the site,” said Mayor Larsen. “Each one reported back that they were not interested in allowing any plantings to take place, and that is the decision of the board.”
“We certainly understand and sympathize with the homeowner,” he concluded.
Members also discussed the village’s ever-present traffic woes, which the mayor called “a nightmare.”
“To solve the problem, we need to work together with the town,” he said. There are too many cars, yes, but there are also traffic-light issues, in particular, he said, the light in Wainscott on Montauk Highway. That light “seems to back up traffic for no apparent reason,” Mr. Larsen said.
“We have a similar problem on Accabonac, it backs up to Town Hall. At nighttime, North Main Street is a complete disaster going toward Springs. There are things we can do.”
One has been done already: Eight officials -- the village police chief, the town planner, the village planner, the town highway superintendent, the village superintendent of public works, the director of the town Planning Department, the village mayor, and the town supervisor -- will meet to attack the situation together, as members of a newly established traffic committee.
A survey is soon going out to village residents asking three questions: Should there be lifeguards at Wiborg’s Beach? Should there be a dog park in Herrick Park? What about pickleball courts there?
In other business, the board will pay Robert Hefner, its consultant on historic architecture, $30,000 for work on the Dominy Shops museum. “Winter weather will determine the speed of progress,” Mr. Hefner said by email, “but the museum should certainly be open to the public next summer.”
Friday’s public hearing concerned a code amendment to prohibit parking opposite the intersection of Main Street and Dayton Lane, “600 feet in a westerly direction, where it had been 438 feet” on the eastbound side. No one objected, and the mayor left the hearing open until December, “If anybody’s out there and wants to email us comments, please feel free to do that,” he said.
