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MY FRIEND MARY-LIZ CAMPBELL is here in Springs, with her mighty arm and genius eye (not to mention her marking paint and tape in festive colors of neon orange and pink). Mary-Liz is a professional landscape designer based in Rye, N.Y., and she can see things about my future garden I can’t (take a look at her own gorgeous garden here).
While I have a hard time seeing beyond what’s already there — a straight-ahead driveway, narrow paths, and stingy beds — Mary-Liz sees a gravel parking court, generous planting beds, a circular flagstone patio, even a gate and arbor leading from the side of the house to the backyard.
She also sees more sun, with the removal of several large trees I hadn’t even contemplated, not wanting to mess with the forest (I also tend to see dollar signs as she outlines the grand scheme).
I’m timid where she’s confident. She took a lopper to my giant rhodies and overgrown andromeda, letting in more light and air. I’d be afraid it wasn’t the right time of year to prune, or that I’d take too much and kill them.
As we watched a deer munch its way across my property yesterday, I think we both saw a deer fence.
We’ve been inspired, on this visit, by a couple of fabulous gardens — one, a private estate on Springs Fireplace Road, by Oehme, van Sweden, the avant garde landscape firm known for sweeping drifts of ornamental grasses and flowering perennials. We went back there twice to drive around the perimeter of the property and spy what we could through the fence.
Last night in the Village of East Hampton, we ooh’ed and aah’ed over the Mimi Meehan native plant garden behind the 18th century Clinton Academy, in mid-July bursting with orange and yellow butterfly weed, day lilies, coreopsis, helianthus and more, all indigenous to Long Island.
I PITY THE POOR COLONISTS (or anyone who lived in the pre-modern era, really). Their homes were so devoid of comfort. No rugs on the hard wood floors, nothing to sit on but stiff-backed chairs, thin mattresses stuffed with straw. Even when they did get those fireplaces cranked up in winter, I’ll bet it wasn’t up to 70 degrees.
Still, their interiors were beautiful in a Puritan sort of way, to judge by the rooms at Mulford House in East Hampton, one of the finest English-style buildings of its era on this continent.
Built in 1680, the house is furnished today as it might have been in 1790, when Daniel and Rachel Mulford lived there with their children and household help.
As recently as 1949, descendants of the family lived in the house, foregoing such luxuries as plumbing and electricity so the house could remain in a state of near-perfect preservation.
One section of wall is stripped to reveal layers of paint colors through the centuries, and a bit of an upper wall has been left open to show dried seaweed packed between the beams for insulation.
The Mulford House doesn’t feel like a museum. It feels like a sparsely decorated Early American house , very evocative and very real.
Louse Point, my favorite beach
I DON’T MEAN TO GLOAT, but I keep confusing my life with a vacation. Going to the beach every day. Kayaking on Accabonac Harbor. Riding my hot-pink balloon tire bike. Eating lots of fresh seafood. Drinking margaritas on the screened porch. (My newfound ability to relax is due largely to having rented my Cobble Hill townhouse as of August 1st – to someone who saw my post on this blog!)
Barn sale on Skimhampton Road
A friend is visiting this weekend. Saturday was a full day, with yard sales in the morning (I got a green wicker side chair for $25, a funky cattail lamp for $15, a Le Creuset pot for $2, and more), and in the afternoon, the East Hampton Antiques Show on the grounds of Mulford Farm, a 17th century farmstead in a state of exquisite preservation.
Rattan and other beachy furnishings at the East Hampton Antiques Show
Needless to say, I didn’t buy anything there, but I enjoyed looking at perfectly restored and gorgeously upholstered Heywood-Wakefield rattan furniture ($12,000 for the couch alone) and saying hi to Rico from Objects in the Loft, a store in West Palm Beach, FL, I’ve written about in Metropolitan Home.
La Fondita, Amagansett, home of the $6 shrimp taco
In the middle of the night the rains came, and I awoke at 2AM remembering that both my car windows and the cellar doors (slanted hatch doors that open from the outside and are referred to around here as ‘Bilco’ doors, which always makes me think of Phil Silvers) were WIDE open.
Today is Sunday. The rain has stopped, and I have some mopping up to do.
CALL IT MODERN. CALL IT RUSTIC. This newly remodeled property, on a third of an acre in a quiet Sag Harbor backstreet, is a hybrid of styles. It’s reminiscent of a French farmhouse, with a barn-like character in its soaring main space. But when she bought it as a development project in 2005, says architect Jifat Windmiller, it was just plain ugly. “People thought it was a motel.”
[Go here and search Web #53269 for more pics and info]
This post is a departure for me, as this is neither an old house (it was built in 1980), nor is it inexpensive (I generally try to feature houses under $500K, which is kind of a challenge in the Hamptons). But I’m blogging about it because Jifat, a highly talented architect, is one of my dearest friends, and I’m very impressed with what she’s created.
She was drawn to the property initially by the one-of-a-kind post-and-beam structure in the double-height living room. “That is why I bought it,” she says.
Aside from that dominant, uniquely sculptural feature and three massive fireplaces, “every wall, window, and door is completely new, and in a new place.”
Divided-light windows and French doors flood the rooms with light. The front porch is on ground level, like a modernist arcade, with classic barn doors that slide on tracks.
Jifat completely remodeled the kitchen and baths, and built additions for a dining room and master suite with a roof deck overlooking the pool. The house now measures 2,750 square feet, with 3 bedrooms and 2-1/2 baths.
She also designed and built a totally charming pool/guest house with wonderful medieval-style windows that I could be quite happy living in, if zoning laws allowed.
I’VE REALLY GROWN TO LOVE Sag Harbor, particularly the back streets. The historic whaling village is packed with uber-charming cottages – at this time of year, often covered in climbing roses.
Surprisingly, this year’s annual Sag Harbor House Tour, which takes place Friday, July 10, features a much more varied selection of houses than one might expect in a town whose history goes back to 1707, including a couple of startlingly modern ones.
Among the six houses on the tour is a 19th century workingman’s cottage owned by the proprietors of Fisher’s Antiques, a longtime fixture in the village, where walls have been removed to create an open, airy interior filled with a mix of modern, historic, and handmade furniture.
And yes, there’s a classic Greek Revival built in the 1840s by Daniel Smith, a merchant sloop captain, and a rambling barn-red house with an artist’s studio, a collection of Oriental rugs, and kitchen cabinets fashioned from leftover floorboards.
But there’s also a pre-fab, modular 2,500 square foot house in nearby Noyac, top and below, designed by architect/owner Laszlo Kiss — an ecologically correct dwelling so tricked out with energy-saving features that the energy bill for a year, including heating, cooling, and maintaining the swimming pool, is less than $1,300.
The architect calls it the “ASAP House,” for “About Saving A Planet.” Set back behind ornamental grasses and clematis climbing up steel wires, the structure, built last year, uses photovoltaic panels, geothermal heating, and natural shade and light.
Kiss hopes to build more ASAP houses, the design of which can be adapted to the needs of its owners. The house takes only 7 to 9 months to build. The cost per square foot: $265.
The tour benefits the John Jermain Library. Tickets are $40 at the library, 201 Main Street in Sag Harbor. For further information, call 631/725-0049.
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