Southampton Post Office's au naturel lawn turns heads

Is it exercising a green thumb, or just sticking out like a sore one?

This is the question prompted by the shaggy vegetation on the Southampton Post Office property, which opened its doors on North Sea Road last summer.

As part of its pending Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) application status for the new building, the U.S. Postal Service adopted a plan of “xeriscaping,” a method of landscaping that employs drought-resistant plants in an effort to conserve resources, especially water. The idea is to foster an environmentally sustainable yard that requires little to no watering, mowing or fertilizers. Native grasses and other selected plants are supposed to carpet the lawn in an aesthetic manner.

The Postal Service has touted the new post office as the federal department’s first LEED-certified facility. Yet with weeds inching ever higher and clover proliferating rapidly, the site has been turning heads, often for the wrong reasons.

“Everybody’s mortified by the post office,” Southampton Village Mayor Mark Epley told the Southampton Village Board last week. “It’s a real insult. I understand it’s a LEED project. It’s supposed to be natural, etc., etc., but the volume of clover and the dirt patches and overgrown weeds and the posts that they left up are not native to this area.”

The metal posts that Mr. Epley noted were part of a fence encircling the post office property during construction, but have remained in place long after the fencing was torn down.

“I know they’re hurting financially—but, jeez, get a goat,” he quipped.

The mayor has been so disgusted with what he considers an unkempt property that he set off on a mission last week to snap dozens of photos of the area, as well as neighboring properties that he considers better maintained, like Schmidt’s Market across the street and the Southampton Village Police Department headquarters on Windmill Lane, whose lawn is manicured by the village. “Schmidt’s has a nice green, plush lawn, and they don’t put sprinklers out there,” he said. “People don’t pull up and say, ‘Gosh, what an unattractive place.’”

The village has no jurisdiction over the post office, because it is under the auspices of the Postal Service. Mr. Epley said he plans to send his photo documentation, along with a letter, to the Postal Service, as well as the local post office, to encourage a tidying-up of the property.

Other Southampton Village trustees have scorned the clover patch of a yard. Trustee Richard Yastrzemski has called it “horrendous,” while Trustee Paul Robinson called it “horrific” and an “eyesore,” adding that the new Hampton Road firehouse, which will also be designed to meet LEED criteria, will have a manicured property.

Meanwhile, it was recently discovered that the low-maintenance lawn required some work that was not getting done. A contracted landscaper whose duty it was to maintain the yard was fired this month for failing to meet its contractual requirements. The U.S. Postal Service has since hired a new landscaper to trim the greenery and provide maintenance, as well as remove the unwanted fence posts. Mr. Epley noted that part of the fencing was left obstructing the sidewalk after the construction was completed, leaving the Southampton Village Highway Department to remove it.

“We had a problem with the landscaper. They did not live up to their contractual obligations,” said Tom Gaynor, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service. “We have a new one coming out at the end of this week or next week. They’ll go and get it in shape.”

Mr. Gaynor said he did not know the names of either the former or newly hired landscaping companies.

David Wenger, president of Wenger Construction Co. Inc., which built the new post office, explained that it is prudent for post offices to begin embracing environmental standards. “It’s a special mix of grass that needs time to take root like any new planting,” Mr. Wenger said of the post office lawn before declining to comment further. He then deferred all questions to the project’s architect, Bill Brady of William F. Collins AIA Architects LLP of East Setauket.

Mr. Brady, as well as Southampton Postmaster Walter Marsicovetere and George Schramm, the architect/engineer for the U.S. Postal Service Northeast Facilities Office, deferred all questions, in turn, to the Postal Service.

Not everyone shudders at the

au naturel

sight, however.

Jim Cantwell, a landscaper from Hampton Bays who works in the village, said as he stood in line to mail some documents last week that he finds the wild aspect of the post office greenery refreshing. “Everything looks so prim and proper,” he said, referring to other properties. “It’s nice to have it a little natural.”

One thing that both vegetation-lovers and -despisers agreed on was that the parking situation at the post office was ill-planned.

“It could look nicer, but it’s supposed to be organic. I wouldn’t mind having it in back,” said Kim Makowski, a bookkeeper at Dunkerley’s on Main Street, of the xeriscaping, “But what we really need is better parking. We’re backing into each other.”