Larry Carlson's Villa des Amis Will Welcome the Public for Garden Conservancy Open Days

Entering Villa des Amis from the street, one is invited to take a seat on a stone bench inscribed with the words “Man A Passerby.”

The phrase was originated by the conceptual artist and concrete poet Ian Hamilton Finlay on a grave-like stone in his 8-acre “garden,” Little Sparta, noted as Scotland’s greatest work of art, in 1991.

Like the English and French gardens of the Enlightenment, Little Sparta was designed to raise questions about humanity. It made such an impact on Larry Carlson, he recreated the phrase in his own garden, Villa des Amis, as part of his cenotaph, in 2010.

Fresh off a two-month stint in Europe, including Scotland, Carlson admits to his plagiarism. “I stole it,” he said emphatically, while touring Villa des Amis in Bridgehampton.

In the midst of the potato patches of Scuttle Hole Road, Carlson saw a mysterious sign marked only “five acres” in 1986. He rang a local real estate agent and eventually purchased the property from two women who had bought it from a farmer then had a falling out.

“It was just potato fields for miles, all around,” Carlson said. “You could see Mecox Bay and all the way to the ocean.”

Spending an hour with him there is a crash course in the history of landscape architecture. Don’t let the ubiquitous catnip lining the driveway fool you. This is no ordinary garden.

The property consists of 125 trees. His sister counted. Some shooting like bullets 50 feet in the air. A lonesome Russian olive crawls along the grass like some kind of overgrown caterpillar with a silver head of hair.

Shrubs the color of thick blood, flowers that resemble the sun, labyrinths, expansive lawns and small dark pools are all part of the garden that illustrates Carlson’s life, one that is meant to reverberate like a pebble’s ripples in a reflecting pond.

Villa des Amis translates to “House of Friends” from the French. “I built it for friends,” said Carlson, who hosts full moon meditations at the circular stone cenotaph every month.

Even people who hate to sit still can visit the garden, thanks to the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days. Villa des Amis will be open to the public on Saturday, June 17, the garden’s 35th year welcoming the community to the grounds. “The more communal, the better I like it,” Carlson said.

The former cable television pioneer “was fortunate enough,” or smart enough, to retire at age 49 and has indeed made the best of his autumnal years. Carlson is not the type to recline in his easy chair and watch Netflix all day.

The first thing he set out to do after his retirement from HBO was to build his own house and garden, something he had been carrying around in his head since his days as an architecture student.

Starting from the top, he purchased Spanish-style terracotta tiles for the roof. Unlike the usual cedar shake shingles, they last forever. In fact, the ones he bought from a Sag Harbor salvage shop were from a mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, which was torn down. “Sort of instant patina,” he said.

The flooring throughout the house and in the courtyards separating the living spaces, is brick. “Jack Stanley laid 10,000 square feet of bricks inside and out,” Carlson said. The roofing and flooring mimic each other in an organic way.

“The most important thing is that a house and garden should complement each other,” Carlson said. Too many times, it’s an afterthought.

“It’s the architecture of it that interests me,” he said.

You can’t ignore “The Writing Is on the Wall” on the wall of an otherwise sparse outdoor dining room. Beyond the wall is an austere 11-circuit medieval labyrinth, containing 11 concentric circles.

“There is one way in and one way out,” Carlson said. It takes 20 minutes at a leisurely pace to arrive at the center, where two teak chairs face each other.

“You’re more centered when you get out,” he said.

Carlson points to Andre Le Notre, who grew up at the Tuileries in Paris and designed the gardens at Versailles as head gardener under King Louis XIV, as an inspiration.

“The intent and philosophy is that a garden should owe its charm to secret realms and hidden meeting places,” he said. “A garden should reveal itself very slowly.”

Wandering around the garden in spring you smell the sweetest French lilacs before seeing them. When you do spot them, you get to observe a yellow and blue swallowtail butterfly.

Paths lead to nowhere and everywhere.

“I like traveling a lot but otherwise I’m here,” he said.

In winter 2021, he jumped in his red Jeep and crossed North America clocking in 8,500 miles, taking in the northern route to the west and the southern route back east.

To get from the outdoor dining room to Carlson’s art studio, you pass through three gardens, where arbors overflow with wisteria and trumpet vine, protecting a reflecting pond and attracting a plethora of hummingbirds.

Once inside the inner courtyard, the sun strikes you, and lends light to the sketches hanging on the interior walls of the studio, where an understated green metal table and chairs sit surrounded by climbing roses, a fountain and a fireplace.

“All that is subject to origination is subject to cessation,” and “Everything is impermanent,” are Buddhist teachings represented over and over again.

Everything is impermanent, including the residual checks that came from a John Deere tractor commercial shot on the property, which he brings up on his phone in the art studio. The company was so enamored with Carlson, they put him in the commercial, resulting in a SAG card and weekly checks at the post office, until the commercial stopped running.

Lynden Miller, who designed public spaces in New York City, such as Bryant Park, the New York Botanical Garden, Wagner Park in Battery Park City, and Madison Square Park, donated her garden plans and plants to be auctioned off at a charity event. “I went a little crazy with the paddle,” Carlson said.

Next thing he knew, huge trucks were delivering Miller’s trees. “I augmented them,” he said, walking through the most dramatic part of the garden, and dipping into the cozy wildflower meadow.

This is Carlson’s favorite spot to sit, surrounded by poppies, bachelor’s buttons, and Queen Anne’s lace. Wild roses grow against a white fence, and the wind spins a trippy double infinity, or eights sculpture, that Carlson picked up on his road trip, near Zion National Park.

Nearby, a sculpture by the California artist Renzo, found in a tented art show on Mitchell Lane, complements a bronze tree trunk.

Facing in opposite directions, in a squatting position, two naked men are tied together with a large rock on their backs, symbolizing love and humanity. A raven sits on top. Each man is wearing a raven helmet/mask and holding a raven.

“Ravens represent wisdom and knowledge,” Carlson said. “Here, the gaining and the letting go.”

Another engraved stone reads: “Annihilating all that’s made / To a green thought in a green shade,” a line from “The Garden,” a poem by Andrew Marvel, about meditation quieting the mind.

“Sheppard Craige had engravings everywhere in his garden, (Bosco della Ragnaia at San Giovanni d’Asso, Italy) and had the same thing,” Carlson said. “Quite the moment.”

Ravens also welcome visitors to the cenotaph, a monument erected for those entombed elsewhere. The 16 names inscribed in stone here, are the heavy hitters, those who have influenced Carlson the most, ranging from Emerson to Einstein and Eliot.

“All of these men gathered wisdom and passed it on to me,” he said.

During the summer solstice on June 21, the sun’s shadow will line up with the middle column of the cenotaph, inscribed “Summer / Life / Toil / Sunset” and striking the center well headstone. The following day, the shadow moves.

The Garden Conservancy hosts “Digging Deeper: The Garden as a Unifying Force” from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, June 17, at Villa des Amis in Bridgehampton. Tickets cost $40. Open Day hours are noon to 4 p.m. on the same day, and tickets cost $10 at gardenconservancy.org.