In the Garden with Richard Kahn and Elaine Peterson

Richard Kahn and Elaine Peterson share their Montauk home with bees. Not the kind of carpenter bees that tunnel into wooden buildings, but honeybees, the bees that pollinate flowers.

A tribe of honeybees has lived in their attic for years, buzzing in and out through a small hole next to a window frame.

“We never tried to control them,” Ms. Peterson said. “They do their thing and we leave them alone.”

“We give them water and they give us flowers,” Mr. Kahn added.

Their live-and-let-live relationship with their resident bees is typical of the way the couple approaches their garden. They are closely tied to their piece of land on the shore of Lake Montauk, attuned to the cycles of nature, part of the environment. A stroll through their extensive garden reveals their deep love of the land. There’s a lot of history there, and a feeling of permanence. The garden, like its owners, has endured many storms and celebrated many beautiful days.

Trees are important throughout this 2.5-acre garden. Many Japanese black pines used to grow here—they were planted all over Long Island for their ability to withstand the wind, sand, and salt that buffet the coastline. But those pines have died off, victims of voracious beetles. Mr. Kahn and Ms. Peterson love pines, though, and now they experiment with growing different kinds to see which ones can withstand the rigors of the waterfront, and which ones they like. They haven’t quite made up their minds about Bosnian pine (Pinus leucodermis) because, Ms. Peterson says, “they lose a lot of branches. We have to limb them up and limb them up.” They like the Swiss stone pine (Pinus cembra) better, because “it has a nice oval form.” She favors Japanese white pines (Pinus parviflora) too, because “they take any kind of abuse without a problem.” But the overall best pine for them, “the one pine we’ve found,” according to Ms. Peterson, “that can handle the wind and salt spray” on the water side of the house, is limber pine, Pinus flexilis.

Mr. Kahn and Ms. Peterson have been gardening here since their marriage in 1977. It’s been a continual process of trial and error, success and failure, experimentation and always, change. They didn’t start out with a plan; as the best gardens always do, theirs has evolved over the years. “We never set out to do designs for anything,” Mr. Kahn confided. “If I had to design anything, I’d be hopeless!” Instead, they try out different plants. When they lose a tree, they find new opportunity in the space that’s opened up. When they spot a hole in the plantings, they fill it. They continually walk around and look at the garden, and even after 30 years of strolls around the garden, they find new places for plants. “The hundred-and-first time, you say ‘Ah! We could put something in there!’” Mr. Kahn explains.

The front yard is a shady oasis, green and cool and quiet. The backyard, on the lakefront, is an entirely different environment. But in the front there are gracefully curving borders full of hostas and daylilies under the trees, and beds of flowering shrubs and perennials. It takes courage to grow daylilies and hostas in a place so full of deer—they’re two of the plants deer love best. But Mr. Kahn and Ms. Peterson grow them with great success. In fact, Mr. Kahn is a hosta collector. He grows 30 different varieties, ranging in size from a few inches high to 3 feet, and with leaves in shades of green from lime to emerald to rich blue-green, and in different combinations of green-and-white and green-and-gold. Along one property line, there’s a row of the venerable solid green hostas that were part of the original plantings at the house. One of his favorite varieties is Golden Sceptre, a dwarf whose chartreuse foliage illuminates the entrance to the driveway, contrasted against a background of larger, green-leaved varieties. He’s also fond of Aphrodite, a late bloomer with very fragrant flowers.

The deer really like that one, too, “so it’s an annual battle as to who gets it,” Ms. Peterson said. “We who love the fragrance and beauty of the flowers, or they who love the buds.”

The hostas, amazingly, look pristine—not a bite taken out of them. How do they do it? Constant vigilance, and reliance on Liquid Fence and other organic repellent sprays. They have coexisted with the deer ever since they’ve lived here, though the last two years Ms. Peterson has noticed them, “or he, or she,” she says, “as I think we are down to one particular one”, munching on plants that have never been bothered before—Japanese maples, columbines, epimediums, primulas, coreopsis, even Siberian irises.

“But these critters are teaching us about adaptation,” she says philosophically. “We’ve changed their world dramatically and they are adjusting to it.”

Mr. Kahn and Ms. Peterson garden organically, without synthetic chemical fertilizers or pesticides. They started in 1977, to build up the poor, sandy soil so it could better support a wide variety of plants. They add compost to the beds and borders every year, and “we mulch constantly.” As the mulch decomposes, it adds more vital organic matter to the soil. They shred fallen autumn leaves and spread them on the gardens.

What’s more, they believe in gardening the old-fashioned way. “We don’t much like the way gardening chores are done these days by many homeowners and most landscape crews,” says Ms. Peterson. “We don’t use weed whackers or leaf blowers.” They use rakes and hand tools rather than power tools. “We can’t tolerate the noise, and now we know that they are highly polluting in other ways,” she explains.

Another link between their garden and the rhythms of nature is forged by Ms. Peterson’s astrological approach to gardening, which involves gardening activities timed to the sign and phase of the moon. She has been a practicing astrologist since the 1970s, when she began studying the ancient art “in order to find more order to the universe than I saw around me,” she says. Educated in art history and a weaver for many years, “I think I have always been someone who needs to tie things together,” she says. “Weaving is an obvious hands-on application of that, but gardening is, too.” She doesn’t have time to weave these days, but, she says, “the garden has become a weaving together of plant forms, textures, and colors. And the joint pursuits we share here in the garden weave our marriage together and inform it with joy as well as shared challenges.”

This garden is full of treasures lovingly assembled over its long history. Part of it is planned for winter views from the sunporch on one side of the house. Right outside the windows stands a beloved Amur cherry tree (Prunus maackii

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. This tough tree can take blasts of wind, salt and sand that blow off the lake. Its peeling bark is beautiful in winter, and in July, later than Amur cherries bloom in other places, it rewards the gardeners with dense, elongated clusters of fragrant white flowers. Another prized cherry tree is the Japanese variety Mt. Fuji, which graces the front of the house and covers itself with white blossoms in spring.

Close to the water, the garden holds native plants such as shadbush, beach plum and clethra, along with other tough customers like rugosa roses. Storms can send salt spray halfway up the backyard, blasting everything in the way. Plants on this side of the house have to be especially hardy and resilient. And locally grown plants have proven tougher than those from other places.

Mr. Kahn and Ms. Peterson obtained many of their shads locally, getting permission to dig them from building sites that were being cleared. Now, commercial dealers usually buy the plants and resell them at high prices. When Ms. Peterson needed more shadbushes to fill an area not long ago, she bought some that were readily available. In a recent storm, they took a worse beating than the shads of local origin.

In addition to a circular, terraced rock garden, anchored by a small juniper and hosting thymes, dianthus, sea pinks, bog rosemary, small sedums, campanula, veronica, primroses, and other plants, the backyard is also the site of lovely shrub and perennial borders. One is home to Ms. Peterson’s prized Siberian and Japanese irises. She seeks out unusual varieties—one favorite is Sweets of May. A nearby bed holds red-leaved shrubs contrasted with purple and white flowers. In another, bright yellow flowers are played against dark foliage. Two truly stunning shrubs here are the ninebarks (Physocarpus

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, Diabolo, with deep purple foliage, and Coppertina, whose toothed, coppery brown leaves have a subtle golden flush in the center. Both are lovely with golden-leaved shrubs such as Juniperus ‘Aurea,’ Ms. Peterson said.

Around the other side of the house, a potager—a vegetable and flower garden—is protected from the salty winds by a fence and an informal hedge of winterberry and other hardy shrubs. David Austin English roses grow here, where the deer can’t get at them, and 30 varieties of clematis clamber over the fence and scale a wall alongside a raised patio that was once a greenhouse. When the greenhouse deteriorated, they kept the foundation to use as a place to sit and enjoy the sun. Next to the house are beds of lavender and thyme. In the nearby herb garden grow yellow-flowered dyer’s woad and celandine, burnet and lemon balm, chives and oregano.

Some years ago Mr. Kahn and Ms. Peterson purchased the property next door, which had been clear-cut by a potential developer. They planted pines, viburnum, aronia and other native shrubs to enclose the lot, and now are letting it restore itself, mowing it once a year in early spring. “The land is healing,” says Ms. Peterson.

The garden, so in tune with the land, has flourished and grown along with its owners through season after season, year after year. In Ms. Peterson’s words, “We’ve tied together many aspects of ourselves and our histories in this garden. It came with its own history and we wove in ours, and that of our family as time unfolded. And it still changes.

“One of the great oaks is dying and will have to be cut down next winter, opening up another shady spot to the glare of the sun and adding another problem to be solved.”

Richard Kahn and Elaine Peterson will solve it, as they have so many others.