Blue Carreon's Book Showcases 'The Gardens of the Hamptons'

The South Fork is home to spectacular gardens, each stunning in its own way. Blue Carreon set out to capture that diversity in his forthcoming book “The Gardens of the Hamptons.”

The East Hampton and Manhattan resident both photographed and wrote the book, which includes 45 subjects, ranging from small village gardens to grand estates. Carreon didn’t want a book of “cookie-cutter” gardens that are “just hedges and hydrangeas.” Rather, he selected gardens in the hope that people who pick up the book will find inspiration in the variety.

“In creating the book, I wanted to feature a whole variety of gardens,” Carreon said during a recent interview. “What we have here, it’s not just the big, grand gardens. I also wanted to feature the small village gardens that we have in Sag Harbor, or gardens by the sea. I wanted to capture the breadth of the garden styles and the garden sites that we have out here in the Hamptons.”

“The Gardens of the Hamptons” is broken into sections by theme, such as contemporary, artistic, naturalistic, floral and historic.

“In featuring gardens, I wanted there to be something that stands out, whether it’s the creation of different layers of plantings, or the introduction of sculptures, or the creation of various garden rooms,” Carreon said. “I wanted the gardens to be personal stories, not just, you know, a cut and paste design from a landscape architect.”

This is Carreon’s third book. He is an interior designer as well as the designer of his eponymous line of home accessories. He also has experience as a fashion editor, which influenced his photography.

In 2015, he published “Conversations,” a compilation of his columns for The Huffington Post, a Proust Questionnaire-style book that features various interior designers, artists and fashion designers. Then two years ago he published his first book of photographs taken on the East End, supplemented by his words, “Equestrian Life in the Hamptons,” focused on the lifestyle and history of equestrian sports locally.

It was around 2015 when he took an interest in gardens that would lead to “The Gardens of the Hamptons.”

Carreon is originally from the Philippines. He moved to East Hampton with his husband, Bruce Bromberg, in 2015 after living in Hong Kong for about 10 years.

“At that time, when we bought the house here, there was no garden to speak of,” Carreon said.

He had never had a garden before, and it became his first foray into gardening.

“When it came time to create the garden, I asked a good friend of mine, Mario Nievera, a landscape architect, to help me,” he said.

Nievera, whose firm Nievera Williams Design is based in Palm Beach, drew up the master plan.

“Becoming involved with the whole creation of the garden, I just became very interested in the makings of a garden and seeing what plants thrive in the area,” Carreon recalled. “And I started going around the Hamptons looking at what other people were growing in their garden.”

That, he said, started his love affair with gardens.

His own garden didn’t make the cut for “The Gardens of the Hamptons” — except for a snapshot of his rose pavilion on the acknowledgments page in the back of the book.

“I have about 40 or so gardens in the book that are much more worthy of being published,” he said.

He includes some well-known gardens, such as Grey Gardens in East Hampton and the Bridgehampton garden of Louise Riggio and her late husband, Leonard Riggio, the Barnes & Noble founder who died last year.

“I was a fashion editor for a very long time, and I still contribute to various titles, not just for fashion stories, but also for lifestyle stories,” Carreon said. “And through that, I’ve been able to establish connections and contacts, and those have been really helpful in giving me access to various people.”

For example, when the publicist for Liz Lange, the current owner of Grey Gardens, reached out to Carreon about him featuring her fashion line Figue, he took the opportunity to explore featuring Grey Gardens in his book.

“And luckily, she said yes,” Carreon said.

The Riggio garden hosts monumental sculptures as well as “Lay of the Land,” an earthwork by Maya Lin, the architect and designer behind the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

“The size alone is something to see, but the artworks, the sculptures that they’ve placed in the garden, it’s just spectacular,” Carreon said.

He took 95 percent of the photographs in the book himself, and the remainder were provided by landscape architects.

“Some of the gardens I wanted to capture through the cycle of the seasons. So I would go multiple times a year, different times, different hours, early sunrise to sunset,” he said. “And I wanted to really capture the progression of what was blooming every season.”

It was a two-year process for Carreon to create the book, including photography and writing.

“All the years of training as a magazine editor helped me in doing both,” he said. “I love writing. I’ve always loved writing, and then working with fashion photographers for those many years exposed me on how to capture a photograph and find the right angles. And then in creating the stories for each of the gardens that I featured in the book, I got to interview all the homeowners, and in those interviews, I was able to collect anecdotes and personal stories and how they created the garden, the memories that they’ve created in their gardens. And through those, I was able to weave personal, interesting stories for each of these gardens.”

He said getting access from homeowners is a matter of trust.

“They’re opening up their gardens and trusting me to capture what they’ve created — their personal sanctuaries,” he said. “And some of them are really very private.”

The cover garden is the Springs home of Marshall Watson, an interior designer who was a longtime design columnist for The Southampton Press and The East Hampton Press.

Carreon also gives a nod in his book to public gardens and flower farms, in a section titled “Gardens for Everyone.” It includes The Madoo Conservancy in Sagaponack, LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton, the Southampton Rose Society Garden at Rogers Memorial Library, Maryann Tracey’s Sleeping Bee Farm in East Hampton and the Osborn Girls Flower Stand in Wainscott.

“There’s so many flower farms out here, and it’s just so nice to show what we have,” Carreon said.

He said he hopes the book will show “you can create a garden no matter how big or small your land.”

“You could see when reading the book that there are a lot of gardens that are maintained by a team of landscapers, and there are also several that are lovingly maintained by their homeowners,” he said. “So with that in mind, with love and care, you could tend to your own garden and make it beautiful.”

“The Gardens of the Hamptons” is set to be published by The Images Publishing Group on July 15 and is available for preorder. Blue Carreon will appear at “Breakfast & Books” at Serena & Lily Hamptons Design Shop at 332 Montauk Highway in Wainscott on Friday, July 11, from 9 to 11 a.m. along with 11 other authors and/or photographers. RSVP to liza@nivenbreen.com.