Garden Inspiration: Late-Season Lushness in Amagansett

HERE, TO MANY, IS WHAT THE HAMPTONS is really about — not the ocean beaches but the native oak woods and the gardening that is possible within them, with the help of a sturdy deer fence.

This green and lovely 1-1/3-acre spread belongs to Paula Diamond, a self-taught gardener who learned much of what she knows working at The Bayberry, a nursery in Amagansett. To my surprise, Paula only started gardening here in earnest in the late ’90s, which goes to show how much can be accomplished in a mere decade-and-a-half.

Paula’s garden, around a classic cedar-shingled cottage, is very much a shade garden, cool and romantic. I can imagine how spectacular it is in spring, when hundreds of rhododendrons and white irises around the pool are in bloom, but even in early September, it is lush and inviting.

The free-form pool was conceived as a water feature as much as a swimming hole. Paula tells how “the plan” presented by the pool company consisted of a workman with a can of spray paint, who outlined the pool’s shape in one big sweep, and that’s how it remained.

Come along and have a look…

All the hardscaping choices are simple and unpretentious, including pea gravel and river stones used for steps near the house, and bluestone in the pool area. Mulch paths, lined with branches and logs, wend through the woods at the rear of the long, narrow property.

One of two gates, below, leading to the backyard. The fragrant flowering shrub behind is clerodendron trichotomum fargesii.

Above, ligularia in several varieties can be counted on for late-season color.

Rear of the house, above…

 

The gunite pool, designed and installed by Rockwater, is surrounded by boulders and has a gray-toned interior.

Carex Morrowii ‘Ice Dance’ used as a groundcover, above.

Above, an existing six-foot stockade fence was topped with a couple feet of wire as reinforcement against hungry deer. (This is very interesting to me, as my property is surrounded by similar fencing. I especially love how the plantings have come to pretty much obscure it.)

Views back toward the house, above, showing shade perennials (hostas, ferns, hakonechloa) as well as hydrangeas and Japanese maple.

Much of the property remains wooded, with shrubs and perennials profusely planted in semi-cleared areas.

A fiberglass cow in a bed of liriope surveys the back of the property.

New-to-Market Greenport Cottage 415K

HERE’S A FRESH HOT LISTING FOR YOU — it just came on the market two days ago. It’s a classic, cedar-shingled 1920s house with a farmhouse-style front porch, 4 bedrooms, wood floors throughout, and some interior details.  

The house is in Greenport on Long Island’s North Fork, a great little town with a Main Street full of mom & pop stores, a vintage carousel, ice cream parlors, an Art Deco movie theater, antique shops to explore, and a few good restaurants — but Greenport’s main appeal, IMO, is that it’s made up almost exclusively of older homes.

This one seems to have a lot to recommend it, including an attractive garden and a location a block from the Peconic Bay.

On the minus side, it looks like the taxes are high and the lot is small (7,000 square feet). Still, if you’re in the market, it’s worth a look. For more info and pictures, click right here.

East Hampton Village Oldie 695K Negotiable

THIS UNTOUCHED TRADITIONAL dates from when Montauk Highway was already a main thoroughfare, yes, but what that meant was a dirt road with horses and carts clopping along — not the never-ending stream of car and truck traffic that exists today.

Pity, because the house and property are just what I’d want in a different spot: a late 19th century cedar-shingled 4BR, with lots of original detail inside, on almost an acre, and taxes under $2,000/year.

There are lots of good things about it. The long gravel drive and the backyard actually have a secluded feeling, almost a secret-garden feeling. The house is set back a fair distance from the busy road, and perched on a hill. There’s no reason why the front yard couldn’t be enclosed with a fence and high hedge.

Needs TLC, as the ads put it, but that’s far better, in my book, than paying the price for a slick modern renovation that has de-charmed the place entirely.

To see more pics of the interior, for more info or an appointment to see, contact Dennis Avedon at Corcoran, 516/398-6751, dennis.avedon@corcoran.com

Montauk Magic

ONE OF THE OCCUPATIONAL HAZARDS of writing for shelter magazines is that you see a lot of potentially envy-inducing places. Usually, I’m fine. A place may be beautiful, decorated by a top designer, or owned by very rich people, but it’s not generally something I can personally see myself living in, or desiring to live in, and I return to my humble cottage without wanting to cry.

Not so with my latest assignment for Hamptons Cottages & Gardens magazine. For an upcoming issue, I’m writing about a newly built house — compound, actually — on Lake Montauk that looks from the outside like a vernacular cedar-shingled cottage, but inside — sensitively, seamlessly — has all the bright, clean openness of  modern architecture.

The architect is Robert Young of the NYC firm Murdock Young, and the photos in this post (I’m just giving you a sneak peek) are by Michael Moran.

Though the house is 4,300 square feet, with five bedrooms and quite a few baths, it’s emphatically not a McMansion. It’s so cleverly broken up into smaller elements (the architect calls them ‘Monopoly houses,’ which are linked together by a tissue of steel and glass) that it feels totally human-scaled.

Look for the issue, distributed locally in stores here on the East End of Long Island, on August 15.

No Place Like Home

ANY WEEKEND GUEST OF MINE has to be prepared to walk on the beach, go to yard sales, and visit a historic house or two. So on Saturday, when I said to my friend Marilyn Fish, “Oh, let’s just pop in to the Home Sweet Home Museum,” she was game. A few years back, Marilyn and I were editors-in-chief of sister publications, Style 1900 and Modernism. She now works at the Jason Jacques gallery of European art pottery, so she knows a thing or two about the decorative arts.

The house is a cedar-shingled saltbox built around 1720. Disconcertingly, it turns out that many of the furnishings within are High Victorian, and there’s an extensive collection of Lustreware.

Hugh King, above, East Hampton’s village historian, dispelled some of the myths about the house. Chief among them is that actor/playwright John Howard Payne, who wrote the treacly song “Home Sweet Home” in 1823 for his play “Clari, Maid of Milan,” which was produced first in London and then in Philadelphia, was born there. Although Payne’s parents lived in East Hampton for a time, it wasn’t in that house, and Payne was born in lower Manhattan in 1791.

The house came to be decorated in mid-19th century mode because the last private owners, Gustav and Hannah Buek, who were there from 1907-1927, collected the material as an homage to Payne, intending the house to look as it might have when he lived there (though he didn’t).

In 1928, the Village of East Hampton raised $60,000 to buy the place from the Bueks; it has been a museum since.

I was a bit disappointed to find the architecture (which I love) and the furnishings (which I don’t) so out of sync. My favorite aspect of the house is the high-gloss white painted paneling, above, which was added, King told us, around 1750. It made me wonder if some of the dark woodwork in, say, Park Slope, which people often feel duty-bound to keep, couldn’t benefit from a treatment like this.