Garden Philosophy

An essential part of life in the Hamptons is spending time outdoors, whether it be enjoying our beaches and waterways or our own backyards.

Hamptons home landscapes run the gamut from small vegetable gardens and pots on decks and patios to breathtaking estates. Whatever the scale, a garden speaks to a need to forge a connection with nature.

The Hamptons are home to many world-class landscapes and the prodigiously talented designers who create them. How do the professionals create these works of living art? How do these landscapes come to express the dreams of their owners in bough and leaf and blossom? Here is some insight into how three top Hamptons designers turn their clients’ dreams into reality.

Modernist Inspiration

The work of landscape designer Frederico Azevedo of Unlimited Earth Care in Bridgehampton is infused with the modernist spirit of his native Brazil. The pioneering landscape design of Roberto Burle Marx influenced Mr. Azevedo greatly as a young man. Mr. Marx revolutionized landscape design by breaking up the geometric shapes of the classical landscape and introducing natural forms by filling spaces with masses of plants.

Mr. Azevedo has been designing landscapes in the Hamptons for 21 years. Key to his work is listening closely to his clients to interpret their wishes for their landscape. The concept they express to him, he says, is not always what they really want. The first step in his design process is to truly understand his clients’ visions for their gardens.

When he and the client agree on the concept for the garden, Mr. Azevedo distills that idea to its simplest form. It’s a narrowing-down, focusing-in process.

We all like a lot of different things, he explained, but we can’t have them all in the same place and all at once. After all, he says, “You can’t wear all the clothes in your closet at the same time.” He added that one needs to make choices in the yard so the entire property looks consistent and unites into a cohesive whole.

Mr. Azevedo’s goal is to make each client’s landscape function visually as a whole and to suit that client’s needs. For instance, should the driveway lead directly to the front door, or perhaps to the garage? Hardscape—driveways, patios and other hard surfaces—and gardens must work together. Design must be practical, first of all, he advised.

Also, the landscape should be as sustainable as possible, and need a minimum of input from the homeowner, he said. Mr. Azevedo achieves this by thoroughly understanding the growing conditions on the client’s property, even on different parts of the property, and finding plants that thrive in those conditions.

Environments vary widely throughout the Hamptons, he reported.

“We have five different types of soils,” he said.

When choosing plants, Mr. Azevedo said that he also considers the amount and quality of light and shade, moisture, and wildlife in the area, such as deer, raccoons and rabbits. The right plant varieties will be suited to their locations. They’ll still need care, all plants do, but “you won’t have to excessively water and fertilize,” he said of his holistic, environmentally-conscious approach.

Clients also need to think ahead about what they can afford to maintain, he warned. Plants need to be cared for, and Mr. Azevedo’s team also maintains the gardens they install. He has to educate clients who aren’t gardeners that for plants to grow they need care, and maintenance factors into the design process.

Mr. Azevedo’s designs begin with an orderly structure, anchored with formal, geometric shapes such as clipped boxwoods. He then fills the structured space with looser, freer masses of plants.

Color is important in Mr. Azevedo’s landscapes, and so is subtlety of tones. There are cool pinks and warm pinks; yellow can be soft and buttery, bright and lemony, richly golden or orangey—they all work differently with other colors. He said that he believes colors should vary—he’s not a fan of monochromatic gardens—but the colors should harmonize, not clash.

Mr. Azevedo does, however, warn against using too many different colors and plants. Fewer species, he says, produce a bolder picture. He repeats colors and textures across a landscape to unify it. He also designs for multi-season interest.

Perfect Plant, Perfect Place

A very different approach is taken by Dianne Benson, best known as Dianne B., who works with her clients to give their gardens more style, personality and character, she said.

“I don’t call myself a garden designer,” she said. “I never set out to design a garden. I’m an idea person and a really great shopper.”

Ms. B. , who has been “styling” gardens for more than 20 years, said that she can help a homeowner turn a bland, generic backyard into a unique outdoor space that reflects their personality. The key is to find the perfect plants to create just the right look for the garden.

Her first garden client was a fan of her book, “Dirt: The Lowdown on Growing a Garden with Style,” who became a friend. Her friend’s garden had interesting “bones” (garden speak for a landscape’s basic structure), Ms. B. said, but each year her friend hired someone to plant annuals for color. When Ms. B got involved, over four years she replaced the annuals with perennials that added plenty of panache without the need for yearly replanting.

“Almost every garden has something to start with,” Ms. B. explained, going on to say that the start might be a beautiful old tree, or a view of the water beyond the garden’s boundaries.

In creating a garden for a client, Ms. B. looks for that “something” and starts there to build upon. She works with the client to figure out what the client wants from the garden—more drama, for instance, or perhaps they detest a particular plant that’s in the garden now. She then introduces ideas and finds the right plants for each place.

In creating her own garden—a continually evolving project—Ms. B. said that she creates small vignettes of plants in particular places—some hellebores beneath the branches of a small golden spruce, for example—then expands the vignettes and connects them. In each vignette, she combines and contrasts different textures and layers plants of different heights to create rich tapestries of form, foliage and flower.

Since her background is in the world of fashion, the process of building a garden with plants isn’t so different from building a wardrobe of clothes, she said. It’s all about finding the right style and putting the pieces together.

“You build on things. Maybe you start out with 50 iris bulbs,” she said. “Then next year you add 50 more.”

Ms. B. builds up layers and patterns, and over time the garden comes together, she reported. Her ideal client is someone who’s interested in learning about plants. Her garden-making process, she explained, is all about learning and teaching and sharing.

Spring is an especially inspiring time for Ms. B.

“I love when things start to come back to life,” she said.

Like most East Enders, she’s on the lookout for plants deer don’t like. One early spring favorite is hellebores. Plant breeders have developed from the species Lenten rose (

helleborus orientalis

) many new varieties that bloom at different times in a range of colors. The creamy white species has given rise to a host of progeny in shades of pink, purple, maroon, green, white and near-black.

In Ms. B.’s garden, the earliest hellebores bloomed this year in the beginning of March.

At the late end of the season is another favorite, the Formosa lily. This white flower is the last of the lilies to bloom, and it’s not overbearing like the big, overpowering casa blanca lily, she noted. Its seed pods, open and empty, stay on the stalks all winter long, through storms and wind.

Ms. B. said that she doesn’t plant her clients’ gardens. Instead, she offers ideas, finds the perfect plants and directs the people doing the planting. She does a lot of shopping locally, noting that there are many excellent plant sources on the East End.

The “garden stylist” said that she finds great satisfaction in helping her clients create their perfect garden. After all, she said, “Making things happen for other people is often more definitive than doing it for yourself.”

Meanwhile, her own garden continues to grow.

Natural Harmony

Garden designer Craig James Socia has been creating gardens for his clients for 19 years. But his love of gardening began in childhood, inspired by his grandmother, he said. He remembers his grandmother explaining to him as she laid out her rock garden each spring why she put each plant in its particular place.

“I took her knowledge and applied it to my parents’ home,” Mr. Socia said, “not always to their delight!”

For Mr. Socia, the entire property is a garden that includes trees, shrubs and perennials working together for color, balance and year-round interest. He aims to create gardens that reflect the tastes and sensibilities of their owners. And he believes a garden should provide harmony and connect its owners to nature.

“It should allow them a sense of refuge with visual stimulation and a link to nature,” he explained, adding that the aim of his gardens provided an escape from the pressures and concerns of daily life.

In working with clients Mr. Socia begins by listening to their wishes for the property—how they want their outdoor space to function. When he understands what his clients want from their garden, and how they respond to their outdoor space, he studies the site to determine its possibilities and its limitations.

“I spend many hours alone at the site,” he explained.

Then he sets out to design a unique space that exceeds his clients’ expectations, he said.

To do this, Mr. Socia uses color, texture and succession of bloom to create visual interest in the garden. He also likes to incorporate surprises into his gardens. Around a bend in a path one might discover a charming playhouse, for example. Or he may set up visual axes that allow for views of what he calls “gardens of destination” from both ends.

Mr. Socia’s gardens are all site-specific. But a design signature is his twig constructions. An arbor, a chair or settee, a birdhouse, a trellis, a gate—Mr. Socia’s structures, mostly built from native eastern red cedar, distinguish his designs.

In the beginning, he built them all himself. Now he has two full-time carpenters he’s worked with for 12 years who build the twig pieces.

“We have developed a vocabulary unique to my designs,” he said. “We communicate seamlessly and effortlessly.”

Another striking element of Mr. Socia’s gardens is his stonework. His design with stone has evolved over the years as he has deepened his understanding of how stone weathers in our climate. Understanding the weathering process is, he said he feels, essential to good stonework.

When asked how he works with color, Mr. Socia responded, “Simply!” Not one for multicolored extravaganzas, he builds his gardens around a theme color with complementing subordinate hues, and he masses those colors for maximum impact.

A favorite plant for him is boxwood, partly, he said, because it can be shaped into hedges or balls or other forms, but mostly because deer don’t eat it.

Mr. Socia’s gardens are more than design exercises, he reported. He and his team care for the gardens after they’re in place. He said that creating a garden is a rewarding process, “but the nurturing, pruning, training and watching a garden grow is truly the most satisfying.”

In The End

All of the garden experts said that the best garden designs come from a congenial pairing of client and designer and the designer’s ability to meld the client’s dreams with a deep understanding of the particular environment of the property and the plants that can thrive there. Each working relationship is different and each designer finds a different path to the art of garden design. In the end, people, plants and place come together to make magic.

For additional information on For Mr. Azevedo, visit unlimitedearthcare.com. For additional information on Ms. B., visit diannebgardens.com. For additional information on Mr. Socia, visit craigsocia.com.