Charlotte Frieze To Give Lecture In East Hampton On How To Personalize A Garden

The East Hampton Library continues its Tom Twomey Series on Saturday, July 7, with “Big Ideas for Small Gardens,” a lecture on how to design the perfect backyard garden.

Charlotte Frieze, the author, garden designer and landscape architect, will give the lecture, drawing on her own experiences.

“A lot of the big ideas are applicable to gardens of all sizes,” Ms. Frieze said. She emphasized the fact that anyone can create the garden they want. “Gardens have different issues to contend with, and I’m going to talk about how to make what you want possible.”

Ms. Frieze said there are certain things to consider when designing a garden, and privacy is one of the biggest concerns. She said that every small detail has to be considered to make a garden work for an individual home. “The big idea is to have your garden appear as a well-conceived whole.”

Ms. Frieze said her experience as a landscape architect has helped her think of the big picture better. She will be showing pictures of her own garden during the lecture and will be discussing how she got it to be exactly what she wanted.

When she first moved into her current home in California, she said the garden “had great bones,” but she still had to change the design to fit her own needs and was a bit intimidated. “I wanted to make the garden my own, which I think everyone wants to do,” she said. Ms. Frieze said she is excited to show off her garden and the process it underwent to evolve into the garden she wanted.

Ms. Frieze has her extensive background in landscape architecture and design to help her, but she said she wants everyone to realize that they can create the garden they want. She has published many books on gardens, like “The Zone Gardens” book series about what to plant in each specific region of the country, “Social Gardens,” about outdoor entertaining, and her most recent book, “Private Paradise,” about contemporary American gardens of all kinds.

Her books are full of photographs of gardens of all different shapes and sizes, as she wanted readers to see every possibility. “A lot of those gardens I was familiar with, and some I just thought were great examples of things that people might not think about when designing their own garden. I wanted to show things people hadn’t seen before.”

Ms. Frieze’s lecture will be followed by a self-guided garden tour, which she will attend. “I can’t wait to see the selection!” she said.

“Big Ideas for Small Gardens” is the third lecture in the 2018 season of the Tom Twomey Series, a lecture series born in 2015 in honor of Tom Twomey, the late chairman of the East Hampton Library Board of Managers.

Chip Rae and Brooke Kroger, two of the library board members, asked Ms. Frieze to give the lecture.

Ms. Frieze said she can’t wait to give the lecture and take the garden tour—the gardens were chosen by Ms. Kroger. She said she admires Ms. Kroger and the hard work she puts in to make the series a success. “I think it’s terrific that the library has this in honor of Tom Twomey, and that it’s free to the public,” she said. “I am delighted to be a part of it.”

“Big Ideas for Small Gardens” will begin at the East Hampton Library at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 7, followed by a self-guided tour of private East Hampton gardens at 10:30 a.m. Maps and information about the homes on the garden tour will be distributed at the lecture. Admission is free, but reservations are necessary. To RSVP, visit tomtwomeyseries.org.