Guild Hall's 'Garden As Art' Returns

The annual Guild Hall “Garden As Art” tour will be held on Saturday, August 27, and will feature five East Hampton-area gardens. This year’s event will also feature a pre-tour cocktail reception from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday, August 26, and a breakfast and lecture at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday morning.

Kicking off the event on Friday night, patrons and benefactors will sip cocktails at a tiered garden overlooking the ocean and with sunset views of Georgica Pond. Then on Saturday, tour attendees will attend breakfast and an illustrated lecture at Guild Hall with garden designer Jack DeLashmet, author of “Hamptons Gardens.” A book signing will follow. The self-guided tours begin at noon.

Gardens featured on this year’s tour include: Edwina von Gal’s rustic garden and Anna Danieli’s farmstead in Springs, Priscilla Rattazzi’s and Chris Whittle’s Georgica Pond property, a 4-acre site on Middle Lane and Barbara Goldsmith’s East Hampton garden.

Ms. von Gal’s minimalist “non-garden” on Accabonac Creek shares a view that once inspired famed former Springs-based artists Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. The tour at the landscape designer’s home will include a studio visit, salt marsh views and works of art by many of Ms. von Gal’s friends and acquaintances, including a sculpture made of blue glass pebbles by Vietnam Veterans Memorial designer, Maya Lin.

There will be two gardens designed by Oehme van Sweden on the tour this year: Ms. Danieli’s garden in Springs and Ms. Goldsmith’s garden in East Hampton Village. Ms. Danieli’s property boasts a 2-acre four-season garden featuring grasses, low-maintenance perennials, mature trees and a variety of edibles. Ms. Goldsmith’s property makes the most of its unique topography, which is set on a high ridge formed by a secondary dune. Trademark Oehme van Sweden-style mass plantings of perennials and grasses grace the plot as well.

The 11-acre Rattazzi/Whittle property commands a view of Georgica Pond, Wainscott Beach and the Atlantic Ocean. The house and land beckon back to old East Hampton summer colony days, with 100-plus-year-old specimen trees, a rolling expanse of lawn and a 1930s-era home, complete with ample porches.

The 4-acre Middle Lane garden, which was once a potato farm, possesses mature deciduous trees and evergreens, forming a park-like setting. The property also includes a pond and waterfall, complete with wildflower border.

Tickets to the Guild Hall “Garden As Art” tour, lecture and breakfast on Saturday, August 27, are $100, or $85 for members. Patron tickets to the cocktail reception on Friday, August 26, and the tour, lecture and breakfast on Saturday, August 27, are $300. Benefactor tickets, which include the Friday night cocktail reception, plus the tour, lecture, breakfast, and a private luncheon on Saturday, are $500. For information or reservations, visit guildhall.org or call 324-0806, ext. 22.