At Home With Sarah Hunnewell And James Ewing

Ferns, holly and white pine line the brick drive of Sarah Hunnewell and James Ewing’s Water Mill property. On the face of it, the Colonial-style home doesn’t belie the beauty of the gardens beyond, 2 acres reaching toward a finger of Mecox Bay.

The couple, who were both born in New York City and had former lives as an architect and carpenter, have dedicated their remaining years to giving back to their natural surroundings.

Both are members of Sustainable Southampton Green Advisory Committee but found that doing their personal best is the best way to go. “We’re trying to be role models and live our lives in an environmentally friendly way,” Hunnewell said.

Hunnewell and Ewing met in 1990 in a production of “The Dining Room” by Hampton Theatre Company in Quogue and continued to work there together until their retirement five years ago.

Hunnewell’s grandmother Rhoda Wichfeld built the house in 1960, a year after her husband died. “She built it to live alone,” Hunnewell said. “The house is a hodge-podge, an exact copy of a small saltbox of the 1800s.”

Wichfeld loved old stone houses and constructed the house with very thick walls so it appears bigger on approach than it actually is inside. The foot-thick walls also created interesting interior nooks and built-in shutters.

“There are two rooms on the ground floor and two upstairs,” she said, heading up the center staircase to the tight guest quarters.

“My grandmother figured it was so small, no one would stay,” Hunnewell said. “I stayed here as a youngster.”

A mirror painted with butterflies that hangs over the single bed might have met the same fate as an invasive species in the garden had Hunnewell not come across the same mirror in a magazine feature on the interior decorator Billy Baldwin. “I think it’s hideous but interesting,” she said.

The master bedroom is another story. A large-paned window overlooks the gardens, spectacular in any season. Nothing like putting in a hard day’s work and then being able to enjoy the fruits of your labor in so many delicious ways.

Back downstairs, a sunroom was added a decade ago, utilizing the south-facing direction of the home to gain passive solar. “It’s great in the winter,” Hunnewell said. “We hardly used the heat.”

Ninety-four solar panels on the roof of the house and around the yard add more solar power and a negative electric bill.

The backyard is divided into several areas, including a greenhouse, vegetable beds, fruit trees, a variety of berries, expanses of towering native wildflowers, and the all-important piles of compost.

“We shape our local landscape like a living room,” said Ewing in the backyard. “It’s nature expressing itself, not man.”

“We started with the food thing,” Hunnewell said. “It took me a long time to convince Jimmy that flowers had a value. His eyes were open when he learned from Doug Tallamy.”

Douglas Tallamy is an entomologist, ecologist, conservationist and author of “Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard” and “Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants.” His website homegrownnationalpark.org is a great source for why we should all plant native.

“You don’t have to have a big property. You still have a choice,” Ewing said. “No garden is too small. Every little patch helps.”

The ongoing trend of the suburban green lawn is not conducive to a healthy environment. The process of eliminating keystone species such as oak trees, and replacing them with grass turf and a hedgerow and then dousing everything in chemicals that kill the insects, and in turn birds and other wildlife, is helping to destroy the Earth.

“The door used to be covered with June bugs,” Ewing said of the now elusive beetle, which is drawn to porch lights on warm spring nights. “We leave the screen open. Nothing comes in.”

“We’ve destroyed the natural habitat flora and fauna,” he said.

“We try to feed them,” Hunnewell said as a bee took nectar from a hoary skullcap, a native perennial that has been considered extinct in the wild in New York.

“Monarchs are endangered now,” lamented Ewing.

Just last month, the migratory butterflies were classified as “Endangered” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species.

“Monarchs are looking for a safe space to land,” Hunnewell said. “Our milkweed looks horrible now because they ate them all.”

As far as diet goes, Hunnewell and Ewing are vegetarians and grow all their vegetables. A square patch of three types of squash dominates the fenced-in food area in August. Tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, lettuce, kale, okra and corn all have their place.

“I cooked the biggest eggplant I’ve ever seen last night,” Hunnewell said. “I just slice it and bake it with Parmesan cheese. I don’t do anything fancy.”

Marigolds break up a row of string beans, to deter rabbits and deer; however, a baby rabbit has hunkered down in a thicket of beans. “They leave enough for us,” Hunnewell said.

In the winter, the couple grow salad greens hydroponically, in the truly rabbit-proof basement.

There is a nearly 300-square-foot greenhouse that is used to start seedlings in the spring. There’s also a workbench for Ewing to craft whatever is needed, but the cost of heating it was not worth using it to grow during the coldest months.

“Because we eat a lot of vegetables, we have a lot of compost,” Ewing said. There’s one big debris pile and five smaller bins, each one at a different stage of decomposition.

They are lucky to have very rich farmland to begin with. “See the color of the soil?” said Ewing, as he picked up a pitchfork of dirt.

“One thing is key,” Hunnewell said. “No spray, anything.”

“The top three inches of soil are the most productive part of the soil, and very sensitive,” Ewing said. “We come along and poison them.”

Another big no-no are gas-powered leaf blowers. Not only does the engine, as well as the noise level, pollute the environment, they stir up toxins, like fungus and feces, on the ground, that people breathe in. “They should be banned all the time, not these half measures,” Hunnewell said. “Nature takes care of itself.”

But what to do when none of your apple trees are fruiting?

“We were told to plant a crabapple tree to pollinate last year and look at these. Every tree has apples,” Hunnewell said. “We cut around wormholes. They’re good for applesauce.”

There are a lot of plans still taking effect but a big goal going forward is getting rid of the “evil” lawn. What grass remains, however, is mostly weeds and clover. “We only mow with an electric mower.”

Hunnewell designed the layout of native planting beds in the field beyond the food growing area. “I can only think of the field as a whole, not by bed,” she said. “It is meant to have an organic natural feel and is not tightly designed.”

She began by drawing desired lines, areas where you would want to walk, then the beds. Each one a different shape, filled with purple coneflower, Joe Pye weed, bee balm, Baptisia and Viburnum, sometimes lost in elderberry. As the beds evolve, the shape of the garden continually changes.

“The garden looks better than ever this year. I’m convinced it was because we didn’t do anything in the fall,” Ewing said. “When we cut stuff we use it for firewood or grind it for compost, and we have great soil as a result. We like to keep everything on property.”

Impatiens, an oddball non-native, appears on the stroll. “A bird brought them as a present,” Hunnewell noted. “As long as it’s not doing any harm it’s OK to keep it if you like it.”

“We’re not perfect,” she said. “We may get perfect.”