Habitat

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Southampton Historical Museum will hold its annual Insider’s View house tour and benefit on Saturday from 1 to 4 p.m.

Jason Norris said goodbye to chasing swordfish and tuna, hello to a different kind of green scene, toxin-free landscaping.

At the recent Architectural Digest Design Show, a panel about daring design evolved into a discussion of trends, clients, art, backgrounds, and big budgets, much to the delight of the audience.

When Paul Masi and his colleagues at Bates Masi and Architects in Sag Harbor design a house, they focus first on its key elements. “We try to understand what the essence of it is,” Mr. Masi said. “We know that it’s going to be a pretty house, but it needs to be more than that. It needs to be meaningful to the occupants and also in its relationship to the landscape.”

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.

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.

Joe Nahem of Fox-Nahem Associates and Jeff Fields, his partner in life as well as work, welcomed a visitor to their modest house on Further Lane, Amagansett, recently and said they had gone from living in “a crappy little nothing house, which we were fine with at the time” to one with unique personality in keeping with the firm, which is on Elle Décor’s A List and is one of Architectural Digest’s “AD 100.”

With a husband who is a chef, Patty Sales cannot generally be found cooking. But baking is a different story.

The East Hampton Historical Society’s 2017 House and Garden Tour will feature five houses ranging in style from traditional to modern on Nov. 25 from 1 to 4 p.m. A cocktail party to benefit the historical society will take place at the Maidstone Club on Friday, Nov. 24, from 6 to 8:30 p.m.

If you have traveled on Montauk Highway, going in and out of Bridgehampton during the last six months, you may have noticed and wondered about white posts standing off to the side of the property just east of the Bridgehampton Inn.

Around 30 years ago, I designed an exhibition titled “Long Island Modern” at East Hampton’s Guild Hall. Curated by Alastair Gordon, the architecture critic and historian who at the time was a columnist for The East Hampton Star, the show was a celebration of the early modernist houses built on the East End in the post-World War II period, principally in the 1950s and beyond.

“Signs and Seasons” is an astrology cookbook by Amy Zerner, Monte Farber, and the chef John Okas.

In the 1950s and ’60s, pressing a button on an intercom to talk to someone in a different part of your house was considered a technological score. Now, nearly every imaginable household device can be controlled remotely, whether you don’t feel like getting off the couch or are halfway around the world. The average homeowner is in control, thanks to the advent of smart home technology.

“I am one of the only people in town who can do almost anything,” Bob Linker said the other day. “You bring me your brass, bronze, your grandfather’s knickknack, and I’ll fix it.”

The grounds of the historic Mulford Farm on Main Street in East Hampton Village will be jammed with antiques and art from 50 dealers — and with shoppers hoping to find objects they just cannot do without — starting July 21 at the 11th annual East Hampton Antiques Show sponsored by the East Hampton Historical Society.

Fireplace Farm, where Paul Hamilton grows produce and flowers and keeps bees and chickens, is a rural place right near Gardiner’s Bay, with hardly any houses to be seen.

There are plenty of garden tours to enliven the summer and provide sneak peeks behind the hedges, but few allow participants past the front door.

From Kips Bay to Pasadena, designer show houses across the country afford opportunities for interior designers to display their talents while at the same time raising money for a wide range of charitable causes.

The 1894 oil painting above, by Mary Nimmo Moran, is an imaginative rendering of a long garden she planted along the south border of the Moran House property on East Hampton’s Main Street, where she and her husband, the painter Thomas Moran, lived in the late 19th century.

Andrew Geller’s uninhibited, angular houses of the 1950s and 1960s were cut from a playful mold. He was known as “the architect of happiness,” having designed the prefabricated Leisurama houses marketed for middle-income families by Macy’s, which came fully furnished.

Passover, like all Jewish holidays, floats around on the calendar. It’s never early or late, but always the same time on the Hebrew calendar, which follows a more lunar trajectory. Passover always occurs in the Hebrew month of Nissan, on the 14th. This year that will be the evening of April 10. It takes me over a month to prepare my house for Passover.

From playhouses and knitting to a well-stocked pantry and the perfect crafts room, Durell Godfrey’s second coloring book, “Color Your Happy Home” (Harlequin, $15.99), written with Barbara Ann Kipfer, is a celebration of all things cozy, comforting, and . . . well, homey. Things like coloring on a cold winter afternoon while your daughter is home sick from school, or pulling out the markers at the coffee table while a blizzard rages outside.

Maria Matthiessen of Sag Harbor found herself in a pickle that will probably be familiar to many grandparents: She had not planned to adopt pets, but her granddaughter, Ava, finagled her into it. Two cats, to be precise, from the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons. And that is when the trouble started.

Tom Dakin considers himself an ordinary gardener, but for more than 30 years the part-time North Haven resident has cultivated an extraordinary tropical flower — the canna lily.

Blackberries are one of the great culinary joys of late summer. They ripen at a time when most other berries are finishing, and though they tend to be a little sour when eaten fresh, they have fantastic flavor as well as a rich dark purple color when cooked. They are also great in that they are relatively easy to pick, since the berries are large and sturdy, with a central core that makes them far less fragile than raspberries.