At home with Frederico Azevedo

At the entrance to landscape designer Frederico Azevedo’s North Haven home is a little white sign that reads “Casa Meu,” which means “My House” in Portuguese.

“When my son Lorenzo was a baby, we would leave the house for a walk and five minutes later he would say, ‘Daddy, let’s go back to casa meu,’” Mr. Azevedo, founder of Unlimited Earth Care of Bridgehampton, said of the sign’s genesis. “It was the same with my daughter, Livia. The children always wanted to come back home.”

As they say, home is where the heart is. And while Mr. Azevedo was born in Brazil, has a stylish apartment in New York City, an oceanfront condo in Miami’s South Beach, and regularly travels to Europe with his family, home, to this divorced father and his two children, will always be North Haven.

In the 19 years since he moved to the United States, Mr. Azevedo has earned an international reputation for the graceful gardens he has designed for the rich and famous. His clients have included rock ‘n roll promoter Ron Delsener, Brazilian soccer champion Pele and the late magazine publisher Frances Lear, who asked him to redesign the landscape of the Gin Lane property in Southampton she purchased from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s sister, Lee Radziwill.

Chosen by Robb Report magazine as the “Most Influential Landscape Designer in the Hamptons” in 2007 and featured on the pages of Architectural Digest, the Wall Street Journal and numerous other publications, Mr. Azevedo attributes his success to a simple philosophy.

“My work doesn’t follow the rules,” he has said of his extensive residential and commercial projects, which tend to combine basic concepts of repetition of color, texture and shape. “It’s a modern concept in that everything flows and is interconnected. The challenge is to keep the spaces open, while still providing interest and a diversity zone.”

An early proponent of sustainable landscaping—way before it became the “in” thing to do—Mr. Azevedo believes in designing landscapes that are organic in nature and sustainable with the environment, with minimal use of energy, fertilization and irrigation.

His own North Haven home is a perfect example of his award-winning work. After purchasing the property in 1997, he carefully planned a harmonious deer-resistant layout for the flat, 2-acre, tree-filled property. Spruce, white pine and cryptomeria evergreen trees playfully intermingle with oak and beech trees and an array of shrubs, including buddleia and andromeda, sphere-shaped boxwood and holly.

On a recent early tour of his home, Mr. Azevedo painted a vivid image of what the gardens will look like later this spring when yellow daffodils and narcissus begin to crop up along with beds of purple alium, lavender nepeta and pink peonies. Later in the summer, he said, the gardens will be infused with ornamental grasses and ferns, purple cariopteris, Russian sage, lavender Provence and fuchsia-colored salvia.

No matter the season, the Azevedo family likes to spend quality time outside. His son, 16-year-old Lorenzo, and daughter, 11-year-old Livia, (both students at the Ross School) are known to camp out in a playhouse on the property, which has its own sleeping loft. Lapo, the family’s young golden retriever, also loves to play outside year-round.

The family considers the bluestone patio, which faces the woodland vista and pool/Jacuzzi area, another “room” in this house. Covered by a white-painted pergola—overflowing with white new dawn climbing roses in the summertime—the patio is decorated with stylish teak furniture (and lime green Phillipe Starck chairs) and vintage mirrors, which reflect the garden’s captivating flora and fauna. Overhead, playful wire monkeys from France swing from the pergola’s beams.

Not surprisingly, the landscape designer’s creative sensibilities extend inside the house as well. Personally designed by Mr. Azevedo, the 2,800-square-foot American Colonial has five bedrooms and three baths.

New York and East Hampton-based interior designer Michael Weisman helped with the interior design, which mirrors Mr. Azevedo’s philosophy of repetition and simplicity and is a showcase for his many treasures.

Upon entering the space, visitors are immediately struck by the uplifting color of the pure white, light-filled rooms.

“The lighter you paint the inside, the more interesting the outside becomes,” he said, and indeed, it does look like the outdoor landscape is a continuation of the interior space.

The floors throughout the house are glossy, wide-plank white pine, but they were artfully stained in a diamond pattern in cream and taupe colors in the foyer. A light fixture that hangs high above the entry staircase is made of alabaster and was positioned so that it has a glowing moon effect when viewed from outside the second-story window.

To the left of the entry is a formal living room, where many of Mr. Azevedo’s favorite possessions can be found, including a whimsical black bear that greets visitors and is carved from a single piece of wood. Vintage wrought-iron balcony pieces salvaged from the New Orleans’ French Quarter add architectural interest to the room, as does the antique fireplace mantel and the large columns that separate the living area from the adjoining dining room.

As stated earlier, Mr. Azevedo is a firm believer that interior design should have a certain amount of repetition, and certainly that can be found at Casa Meu. Walking from room to room, Mr. Azevedo pointed out a number of recurring elements including sisal rugs; oversized mirrors made from reclaimed molding and trim; floor lamps fashioned from antique newel posts; beds crafted from American Shaker wood flooring; sofas, chairs and love seats upholstered in silver, white and natural cream tones; and simple muslin drapes in a buttery color.

“I believe that things look more consistent if you repeat a lot of elements. It’s just like life, the more consistent you get your life to be, the better you feel. It’s the same with landscaping design—repetition of plants, details and colors offers a more unified design,” he explained.

One of Mr. Azevedo’s favorite pieces in the living room is a coffee table made of driftwood from local beaches by Montauk artist Tom Fleming. Other driftwood pieces by the artist include a sideboard in the dining room and a game table with a bluestone inset in the family’s guest/game room.

Mr. Azevedo’s appreciation of art, whether in the form of furniture, photography or painting, is also evident. Important works by well-known contemporary artists and photographers including Steven Jack, Laura Paresky, Todd Stone, Romero Britto, Shelli Breidenbach and Mario De La Iglesia hang in prominent places throughout the house. A stunning horse photograph by Steven Klein, who has photographed the likes of Madonna, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, is placed atop the living room mantelpiece.

In the dining room, a unique rubber vase created by famed Italian artist Gaetano Pesce, sits on the driftwood sideboard, as does an Italian porcelain vase in a blue and orange floral design that was a wedding present to his late mother.

“Oh, and look at this,” he said with boyish delight, pointing to a painting on the nearby wall. At first glance, the painting by American artist Charles M. Russell looks like a 19th century Wild West buffalo hunt. But a hidden key unlocks another painting underneath, this one of a couple caught by surprise in the act of passion.

Family heirlooms also bring great joy to the landscape designer. On top of the dining room’s Venetian mirrored bar, for example, is a pure silver tray that dates back to Brazil’s Imperial period. Matching candelabras “that weigh a ton” are in the living room. Both were passed down from Mr. Azevedo’s late father, who was in the import/export business in Brazil.

When he can’t grill outside on the patio, Mr. Azevedo enjoys entertaining guests at the square, wooden table in the dining room, which has a base made from salvaged wood corbels. Eight wicker chairs, cushioned with a fun 1940s-looking “Monkey Business” pattern, give the room a bit of a Carmen Miranda feel.

More wicker furniture (repetition, anyone?) is found in the nearby family room, which leads to the kitchen. The art deco-era white wicker sofa and chair were auction purchases.

The kitchen is another example of the landscape designer’s love of classic lines and simplicity. White bead-boarding and cabinets look crisp against the stainless steel appliances, terra-cotta tile floor and large black Movado wall clock.

Upstairs are the family’s bedrooms and Mr. Azevedo’s black-and-white home office. It is at his sleek, white Formica and stainless steel desk, by designer Norman Foster for Kartell, that Mr. Azevedo said he does his best creating and thinking.

Looking out the large picture window that overlooks the backyard and pool, he said he feels like he’s “high above, driving an airplane into the landscape outside.”

The landscape designer’s love of black and white for interior colors is evident in the office, from the luxurious pony-skin rug to the abundance of black and white photographs that fill the walls. There are photos of Livia riding at the Hampton Classic Horse Show, the family smiling together in Miami and nostalgic photos of his parents, young and in love and holding hands on a Brazilian beach and walking down a street in his hometown of Porto Alegre.

Mr. Azevedo’s bedroom, luxuriously outfitted in chocolate brown and white, is neat and orderly, just like the rest of the house. Perhaps that’s why Livia lovingly gave her father a little book called “Mr. Perfect,” which he keeps by the television.

Obviously a man with a sense of humor, Mr. Azevedo placed a whimsical Piero Fornasetti “Wink” pillow (of a woman winking on one side, and sticking her tongue out on the other side) on the cream-colored chair next to the bedroom’s fireplace.

Next to his bed is a large, white, fiberglass floor planter, a design of his that was awarded “Blue Ribbon” honors at the Martha Stewart Container Show at the LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton last year.

Other examples of Mr. Azevedo’s original garden and home designs, including stainless spheres in varying sizes, are found in the house. Manufactured in Germany by Blomus, they can be purchased at the Unlimited Earth Care showroom in Bridgehampton.

With his children nearby, Mr. Azevedo enthusiastically showed off a crude wire sculpture of a wolf that Livia bought at a Ross School auction to help children in Afghanistan, and blown-glass balls that Lorenzo made as a gift for his father at a summer art camp a few summers ago.

“Out of all my wonderful possessions, the things that have the most meaning to me come from my family,” he said.