Garden and Home

Long Island’s South Fork, known for beaches, maritime history, and fancy people, is also known for its hedges. Hedge installation and maintenance are big business, and there could be a whole book about hedges, with different varieties popular during different eras. In the last decade, for example, the “green giant,” a now ubiquitous tree, has been placed along property lines throughout the Hamptons. It’s here to stay, and grow, and grow.

Liz and Joe Sanicola’s house in East Quogue is a modern homesteading paradise — the ultimate intersection between home and garden.

In the summer months, under the immaculately tended giant rhododendron stand in Henry and Martha Murray's backyard on Further Lane in Amagansett, their young grandchildren can be glimpsed darting in and out of the canopy of fuchsia blossoms, visible one second, gone the next.

It takes understated talent and a keen eye for a designer to balance her personal aesthetic with those of a client. "I consider it high praise when a client's family or friends walk into the space and say it's a reflection of the client and doesn't feel designed," said Delia Kenza, an interior designer based in Sag Harbor and Brooklyn.

Here's a guide to growing and enjoying your best tomato-flavored life, thanks to Matthew Quick, the farm manager for the nonprofit Share the Harvest Farm, and Marilee Foster, who typically grows 100 varieties each year on her Sagaponack farm.

The first thing Arthur Beckenstein sees when he steps out of his bedroom every morning is a lush spread of vibrant, earthy color. Maybe it's a textured greenish-brown in the winter, but come spring, summer, and fall, fresh pops of emerald, lime, yellow, purple, and red fill his field of view. It's not a painting. Rather, it's a landscape — a rooftop garden atop a one-story section of his house, visible from the second-floor windows. A green roof, to be exact.

For gardeners and landscapers seeking four-season interest, low maintenance, and environmental impact, trees check off all the boxes. Plus, they offer shade for sitting areas, a backdrop for a garden, and nesting places for birds, among ecological benefits. Just as there’s no irrigation watering trees in a forest, it is not needed for the established trees in your yard. The time and money saved on irrigation and maintenance might feel liberating.

Ever wonder about the long ribbon of pink and white hibiscus blooming at the entrance to the village in late summer, or the flower-filled meadow between Accabonac Road and Methodist Lane? These are working rain gardens that slow, capture, and filter rainwater and road runoff as the water makes its way through the Hook Pond watershed and eventually into the ocean. They are successful examples of a natural solution to a water pollution problem.

Margie Ruddick of the landscape planning and designing firm that bears her name has drawn the proverbial line in the sand, choosing to stop taking on projects that involve new construction, except for well-scaled additions. 

Doug Tallamy, an entomologist, author, and professor at the University of Delaware, encourages homeowners to think about the role our yards play in the food chain that sustains birds and wildlife. The immense decline of the bird population by one-third over the past 50 years has opened eyes to its urgency.

Let us introduce you to the Landcraft Garden Foundation, the North Fork’s fraternal obverse to Jack Lenor Larsen’s LongHouse Reserve and a paradise that Dennis Schrader and Bill Smith have been building on the North Fork since 1992.

The gardens at Home, Sweet Home Museum were dedicated on Sept. 29, 2022, to Loretta Orion, who spent many years restoring and tending them. Ms. Orion, an anthropology professor, a French teacher, an author, a private duty nurse, a seamstress, and an etcher, died in July 2022 at the age of 77. The gardens are always on view for visitors at 14 James Lane.

A home vegetable gardener offers some hard won advice for getting the most out of your garden along with what grows best here.

The Star’s hunter-gatherer, Durell Godfrey, went looking for the kind of stuff that Mother Nature would be happy to use — and reuse whenever possible. She loves sustainability, and so will you. Shop locally and thoughtfully.

Frederico Azevedo has always been enamored with nature, flowers in particular. “As a child I would rearrange the plants for fun and plant the ingredients for my favorite foods,” he said. “The exciting thing about this medium is how it can make people happy and open up new parts of your life.” His business, Unlimited Earth Care in Bridgehampton, is celebrating a milestone this year.

. . . They’d ask for wallpaper, and they’d ask for Heather Dunn.

At first, I liked the bamboo. It was a comforting green wall, separating me from my neighbor’s pool. When the wind blew, it sounded like one hand clapping. At the same time, I found myself thinking, “If the revolution comes, I will dig a trench around my house and fill it with bamboo spears.”

The Traceys are embarking this season on an expansion that will see them transition from their previous location, a Peconic Land Trust plot of a little under an acre behind Balsam Farm in Amagansett, to a three-acre property on Montauk Highway that was known as Bhumi Farm for a couple of years.

Scott Bluedorn, an artist and activist living in Sag Harbor, is also an aficionado of vermiculture — a contained composting system in which earthworms break down food scraps to quickly create a mineral-rich soil amendment.

Perhaps making up for two years of lost time, the spring and summer of 2022 will be filled with marvelous workshops, lectures, and benefits here on the South Fork.

Rain gardens offer an opportunity to work with nature to restore balance, using the contours of the land to capture water that flows to lower elevations. The plants’ roots absorb rainwater and nitrogen runoff, while the soil filters particulates before they end up in our waterways. And rain gardens are also a way to ameliorate the dramatic loss of 3 billion birds in North America over the past 50 years.

Like helicopters and jets, leaf blowers have long been the bane of many a South Fork resident’s existence, each one a portable spewer of pollutants and source of ear-splitting noise. But in towns and villages alike, enough residents got angry and organized, and governments listened. Today, the use of leaf blowers is restricted across the South Fork.

Where some see weeds, others, like Jill Musnicki of Sag Harbor, see "a hotbed of glorious biodiversity," to borrrow a phrase from The Guardian. Her front yard has been carefully cultivated into a pollinator garden with native plants undesirable to some but "a miracle" to bees, butterflies, birds, and all kinds of beneficial insects.

In the Northeastern United States, at least, these blossoms — whether red, pink, peach, yellow, white, or some combination of all — are at peak perfection starting in late May through June. As you stroll about, drive around town, or even take the train, here are some South Fork spots where you can find this favorite flower.

On the list of milestones that allow you, force you even, to reflect back on your life, moving is right up near the top. Efficient packing and smart planning can reduce the angst just a little bit.

Who better to understand the power of collaborations between brands than two women with backgrounds in the fashion industry, which seems to rely on the constant merging of brands? With 100 Design Style, Nikki Butler and Brigitte Branconnier created an interior design company that seems to strike the perfect balance between layout, light, color, tactile materials, and a connection to nature.

Budbreak — when wine grapes’ winter buds open and begin to release their woolly leaves — has unfurled across the East End, perhaps inspiring people to dream of growing wine grapes of their own.

To make your backyard bird-friendly, you'll need to think like a bird when making landscaping decisions.

What are pollinator gardens and why are so many people talking about them right now? The idea, according to the organizers of the Pollinator Pathway movement, is to manage backyards without pesticides and with native plantings so they can connect with parks and preserves, creating a sort of bird and insect “refuge corridor,” an "archipelago" of habitats.

Priya Kapoor Lasky started her business, Own Retreat, based on a simple question: If you desire peace in your life, why not create a dedicated space in which to seek it? She is referring to Zen, meaning a sense of calm, quiet focus, often derived from Buddhism and other philosophies in Asian and South Asian cultures.