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.

June in the Country

THE MONTH OF LONGEST DAYS is drawing to a close, and I feel compelled to celebrate it with a blog post before it fleets by. The alliums, lush purple just two weeks ago, are already browned on their stalks. Those are not my alliums, above, though I have a few, or my lily pool; they are attached to an East Hampton oceanfront estate I toured as part of the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days program on June 21.

Young men in straw hats were stationed to direct mortals like myself through this sensational south-of-the-highway estate, pointing the way to wildflower meadow, cottage garden, woodland walk, vegetable garden, parterre and croquet green (pool and tennis court go without saying). Have a small look:

  

It was a month of yoga on the beach, lobster in Montauk, sunsets from the jetty, and the humble satisfactions of my own half-acre compound shaping up (as I type, two men are working by night to finish the transformation of shed to guest cottage; photos to follow).

I introduced two friends to one of the oddest and most photogenic places I know of on the East End: Multi Aquaculture Systems, an Amagansett fish farm, below, the last on Long Island. Besides tanks of striped bass and other fish, it has ducks and dogs and a cafe selling Provencal pottery and picturesque decaying buildings and wildflowers in abundance by the bay.

       

I swam a couple of times at my local beach, below. It was exhilarating, and that’s how I know it’s really summer.

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.

My Neighbors’ Gardens

THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBORS’ GARDENS, but that’s so very hard to do (or not to do)  during the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days. One of the great things about the Open Days program — besides catering to the garden voyeur in all of us — is that you gain access to the yards of people who live nearby and deal with the same climate and soil conditions you do, which can be instructive as well as envy-inducing.

Yesterday I visited two mature, artfully designed gardens here in Springs (East Hampton), N.Y., and came away with an inspiring glimpse of what can be created with time, effort, knowledge, a bit of money, a whole lot of work, and — this is crucial — a deer fence.

The first, around a contemporary house set way back along a dirt road off Old Stone Highway, was the Previti/Gumpel garden, owned by a pair of architects and 18 years in the making.

Conceived as a series of outdoor rooms, with a formal ‘games lawn’ and many different seating and activity areas, there are both shade- and sun-loving plantings, and a woodland walk.

Right now, tall plume poppies, which I’d never heard of, and gooseneck loosestrife are in bloom, along with multi-colored day lilies and the Hamptons’ favorite floral deer candy, hydrangea.

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Then I moved on to the half-acre, 30-year-old Friend/Hellerman garden, designed and owned by Susan Friend, a professional landscape designer, and her husband Hal.

There is not a square inch of grass. Instead, gravel and carefully placed boulders convey the feeling of a Japanese dry garden, with conifers, rhododendron, ferns, bamboo, and a stone lantern and bridge.

The garden is predominantly evergreen, filled with life even in winter. Flowers progress from Korean azaleas in spring through various varieties of andromeda, rhodies, peonies, and Siberian and Japanese iris. The vine-enclosed outdoor shower, below, is a highlight.

Neither property is more than an acre — which, the more I garden, the more I realize is plenty to be getting on with.

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.