Yugen – A Japanese Garden Where You Least Expect It

THE ADDRESS OF YŪGEN is a closely guarded secret. I didn’t even know of its existence in the backwoods of East Hampton, N.Y., until it appeared in the 2017 catalogue of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program, open for just two hours on a Sunday morning at the end of July.

Yūgen is a privately owned garden of 20 acres, heavily inspired by Far Eastern garden tradition. The property’s anonymous owner, who manages global public health crises, has been working on it for a quarter century. He began as a collector of Japanese suiseki –– small, naturally-formed stones that suggest larger landscapes. This, according to the catalogue, led to more stones in the garden, many on a massive scale, and then to a passion for horticulture.

With advance reservations, my sister and I gained two of the limited places and found ourselves wandering nearly alone through expanses of mossy-banked pine woods, an artificial dune scape, a re-created section of primeval forest whimsically called Jurassic Park, rocks and rills and waterfalls, gravel patches and sculpture gardens (all surrounding a rather more conventional house).

The word yūgen means something like “subtle, profound, mysterious beauty.” It suits.

Garden Envy in Amagansett

The heavenly tented pool pavilion

I COULD GO IN AND OUT of grand oceanfront estates all day long, then come back to my humble cottage and still be happy with the place. I can wander five hedged, manicured, topiaried, statued, fountained acres and admire them, but not care a whit that they don’t belong to me.

Anthropomorphic boxwoods greet you at the gravel parking court

But Sunday I visited an Amagansett garden newly added to the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program and came away wanting to weep.

Perennial beds on a central axis of brick pathways near the property’s entrance

This one is a mere one-third of an acre, surrounding a cedar-shingled cottage with muted green trim.

Tall, columnar Leyland cypresses are dramatic punctuation marks

Yet it has so many nooks and aspects, separated by specimen evergreens and Japanese maples, and blooming profusely in mid-July with tropical-colored cannas, day lilies, fuchsias, and more, it seems much larger, and decidedly un-boring.

Poolside cannas in bloom

A shady back corner with Solomon’s seal, white hydrangeas

The design works such popular cottage-garden features as rustic arbors and a brick-paved entry patio centered on an iron urn, to magical effect.

Day lilies, a dwarf Japanese maple on the pool patio

Masterminded by Victoria Fensterer, a garden designer based in East Hampton, it is dense with plants, but with such a clear structure that it feels not overstuffed but simply abundant.

There’s a small, irregularly shaped lawn, surrounded by tall evergreens and old cedars, so that the edges of the property are blurred and seemingly non-existent.

Dense shrubbery visually expands the boundaries of the small lot

Steps made of massive slabs of stone lead to a naturalistic pool with river stones in place of the usual coping.

Stone steps lead to a free-form pool

And then there’s that piece de resistance, a pool pavilion in the form of a draped, circus-like tent — a festive bit of exoticism on Long Island’s often terribly-traditional East End.

Discovering More of Philadelphia

I LOVE GOING WHERE I’VE NEVER BEEN BEFORE, particularly when it’s to older neighborhoods as lovely and green as Philadelphia’s Mt. Airy. The 19th century houses, many made of stone, have front porches and deep yards — somewhat Southern in feeling, like nothing you would see in New York.

I was there Sunday to visit several private gardens which were open to public view as part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program, and found they lived up to their billing as artful and ‘delightfully personal.’

My favorite of Sunday’s gardens was Lindsay Weightman’s and Hani Zaki’s, all pics above, a testament to all one can do in shady urban space, with a grape arbor, water pots, and multi-level decking. An atmospheric stone ‘outdoor room,’ below, is outfitted with a dining table, chandeliers, and a pizza oven.

Exotic artifacts and architectural salvage, collected by the homeowners on their travels, are incorporated into the garden’s structure.

I also enjoyed the long, narrow (18’x150′)  backyard of Eric Sternfels, above, behind an 1840s trinity house. The unpromising space manages to be surprising and harmonious, with mature perennials arranged along a serpentine brick path that draws you along to the finish line. Sternfels’ own whimsical sculptures, below, hang  at intervals along the way.

We had lunch at the High Point Cafe, where they make crepes to order, imagining how pleasant it must be to live in such a civilized, garden-loving part of town.

Playing Tourist in Philly

The brand-new LeMeridien in Center City

TODAY BEGAN WITH COFFEE AND A CROISSANT at the Reading Terminal Market, an indoor foodie paradise the likes of which no city should be without (though I know of no other such place anywhere) — scores of stalls, from butchers and bakers to candlestick makers, literally. There are outposts of old-school Italian bakeries, Amish cheese makers, stalls selling Provençal linens and beeswax scented candles, handmade chocolates and unusual flowers — everything varied and fresh and reasonably priced.

We stopped in to the Wood Turning Center in Old City, a unique gallery whose current exhibition, “Magical Realism,” features a major work, above, by Randall Rosenthal, my neighbor in Springs — one of Randy’s extraordinary, carved-from-one-piece sculptures. This one is a creative jumble of pads and notebooks, so realistically carved and handpainted you could well mistake it for the real thing.

Then Nancy and I drove 30 miles south into Delaware’s Brandywine River Valley and spent the afternoon at Winterthur, above, the well-known 200-acre estate belonging to Henry Francis DuPont. His 175-room mansion is crammed with important American furniture and antiques. It’s more museum than historic home (H.F. removed bathrooms and kitchens to make more room for the display of objects). The interior of the house, which was built in the late 1800s and twice added on to before H.F.’s  death in 1969, is intentionally a pastiche of styles, with little architectural integrity of its  own. A fanatic collector, DuPont salvaged moldings and paneling and floorboards, even staircases, from various sources, composing some rooms in Federal style, others in Colonial fashion, and so on.

For me, the highlights of our hour-long intro tour of just two of the seven floors were the rooms with wraparound scenic wallpaper — one with Chinese vernacular scenes of the 1700s, above — and the big blowsy flower arrangements, specifically required by H.F. in his will.

We took a tram tour of the grounds, which are gorgeous — all rolling hills and meadows with grazing sheep and ancient cherry trees and sycamores. As an arboretum, Winterthur is unsurpassed, but overall, the experience paled in comparison to yesterday’s exhilarating visit to Chanticleer.

Returning to Philly in the late afternoon, we drove up to Fishtown for a look around, and had a beer at Standard Tap (I’m not much of a beer drinker, but the beers at this place are all local and on draft). We had dinner, on my son Max’s recommendation, at Southwark in Queen Village, a civilized change from the noise and madness we encountered the night before at El Vez, Steve Starr’s gimmicky, wildly popular Mexican restaurant in Center City.

We’re camped at Le Meridien, a sleek two-week-old hotel in a 10-story Georgian Revival building that has been done up by the Starwood chain in mod Eurostyle, top, above, and below. It’s fun walking into the lively lobby bar and reception area, where the building’s original carved decoration is set off by crisp 21st century furnishings, dramatic lighting, and abstract art. The hotel’s location couldn’t be more central — it’s right behind City Hall and next to the park with Robert Indiana’s famous LOVE sculpture.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow: a visit to several small private gardens in the Mt. Airy section, where I’ve never been (participants in the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program), and a final stop at Greensgrow Farms in Kensington on the way back up 95, where I hope to find some out-of-the-ordinary annuals.

Dianne B’s Enchanted Acre

LAST SATURDAY, even though I felt like sh*t (flu-like symptoms from a prophylactic tetanus shot the day before), I dragged myself to the village of East Hampton to get a first-hand view of the fabled gardening talents of Dianne B, onetime fashion-world celeb, now garden author (Dirt, Hamptons Cottages & Gardens) and fellow blogger.

I’m not sure what I expected — but I couldn’t have imagined the highly quirky, unconventional garden I found.

When she wrote Dirt in the early ’90s, Dianne was living on a larger property with her husband, Irving; now she lives on an acre with her partner, Lys. The garden is “new and evolving,” according to the description in the catalogue of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program, of which Dianne B’s garden was a part.

Sick as I was, I’m sure I’m missed the subtleties, like Dianne’s beloved jack-in-the-pulpits and the collection of fritillaria, whose drooping heads Dianne views via a long stick with a mirror on the end — surely some kind of Victorian invention — that she carries as she traipses about in her trademark jodphurs, a la Vita Sackville-West, and leopard-skin boots.

But the garden as a whole is hardly subtle. It’s more like an art installation, with sculptures, contorted trees, bizarre topiaries, and color combos like chartreuse and pink. If it weeps or twists, Dianne has it. It all adds up to a dramatic, bohemian garden, surrounding a sprawling shingled ranch.

Truth to tell, it was a bit much for my feverish eyes. I’d like to go back someday when my temperature is normal.