Sleepy Cat Farm Owner Will Share 'A Gardener's Journey' on April 16 in Bridgehampton

Fred Landman did not have a horticultural background 25 years ago when he began to transform the grounds of his Greenwich, Connecticut, estate into a number of gardens that take inspiration from his international trips.

That makes what he’s accomplished on his now 13-acre property, named Sleepy Cat Farm, all the more impressive. The story is told, through words and photographs, in the book “Sleepy Cat Farm: A Gardener’s Journey,” and he will share his experience in a lecture of the same name hosted by the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons in Bridgehampton on Sunday afternoon, April 16.

Landman said during an interview on Friday that the talk comes down to: “How did this weekend gardener end up doing something like this?”

Among the various garden spaces are those with straightforward names that give visitors a good idea of what to expect, such as the Perennial Long Border Garden, the Iris Garden and the Woodland Walk, and those with names that get the imagination going, such as the Spirit Walk and the Golden Path. The estate also includes an organic farm and orchard overseen by Landman’s wife, professional chef Seen Lippert.

“It’s a pretty special garden, and I think most people who come here walk away with that same opinion,” Landman said. “It’s a garden you go to experience. I love looking at pretty flowers, but this is way beyond pretty flowers.”

When he purchased the property, there was no garden at all. “It was 6 acres, and there was something of a lawn and a woodland,” he recalled, “and that was it — and a nice house.”

He bought the property in 1994, six years before he would retire from a successful career on the business side of satellite communications. The house was a very pretty brick Georgian that was in desperate need of updating, he said. “It was built for the ’40s with tiny maid’s rooms, tiny little kitchen nooks and butler’s pantries and things like that, which is not my lifestyle.”

He engaged architect Charles Hilton to update the house and landscape architect Charles J. Stick to reimagine the “ugly yard.”

After retiring, Landman really got going on the landscape, and as he took trips around the world, he came home with ideas. He’s been to France, Italy, the Netherlands, England, Denmark, Spain, China, Japan and Australia to tour gardens.

“I was visiting private gardens in Europe, Asia and elsewhere and looking at what people were doing,” he said. Walking through a garden started by just one person 50, 100 or 200 years ago was a wonderful experience that made him feel great, he said, and he realized he could create the same feeling with his property.

Landman named it Sleepy Cat Farm because of all the cats that live there, 15 at present. He began opening the garden to the public in 2007 for events like Garden Conservancy Open Days.

“People always say, ‘Oh, it’s so nice of you to open your gardens to us, to the public,’” he said. “And I say, ‘Well, why wouldn’t I do that?’ What am I going to do, sit here like a miser and just say no one can see this except me?”

He said he’s glad people can enjoy it, and he hopes they can enjoy it into the future. “It’s my goal that it doesn’t end when I end,” he added.

He has already put the gardens into a 501(c) nonprofit, which he has been funding, and intends to find the right people to run it when he is gone.

From the thousands of visitors the garden has had over the years, Landman has yet to hear a complaint, though he has received many compliments.

“There’s a lot of talk about what gardens do for people, and the healing of gardens and just the uplifting of people’s spirits walking through a garden, and I’ve witnessed that firsthand when these people come traipsing through on a nice day and just come out just feeling lifted up,” he said.

Key to all of this, Landman said, is working with good people.

Stick has worked on the project for 25 years, and stonemason Mauro Fidaleo has done all the stonework at Sleepy Cat Farm for just as long. The head gardener, Alan Gorkin, who lives on-site in a two-bedroom apartment in a renovated building with an attached greenhouse, has worked there for 17 years.

More than a decade ago, Sleepy Cat Farm grew when Landman purchased a neighboring property with a French theme. It came with a main house, which he said was beyond restoration, and a number of dependency buildings. Keeping the theme, he brought Hilton back to replace the main house with a French Norman-style guest house — with an entertaining space for dinners, two kitchens, a wine cellar and a root cellar — and the dependency buildings were restored.

Post-expansion, Sleepy Cat Farm has a nearly 60-foot change in elevation from the upper gardens to the lower gardens.

“You don’t need a StairMaster,” Landman said. “We got our own StairMaster going up and down these steps.”

He acknowledged that gardening at this scale is expensive.

“This is where I’d like to put a lot of money because I certainly get a thrill out of it,” he said. “… And I consider myself very fortunate to spend my days in this garden when I’m home.”

Landman said the point is not whether someone has that much land.

“You have what you have, and you make what you can make,” he said. “But if you’re going to make something, try to make it beautiful and something pleasing that you enjoy, and if you enjoy it, there’s a perfect chance other people can enjoy it as well.”

Fred Landman will present “Sleepy Cat Farm: A Gardener’s Journey” at the Bridgehampton Community House, 2357 Montauk Highway, Bridgehampton, on Sunday, April 16, at 2 p.m. Admission is $10, or free for Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons members. Visit hahgarden.org for more information.

Sleepy Cat Farm will welcome the public for Garden Conservancy Open Days on Saturday, April 29, and Saturday, August 19. Register at gardenconservancy.org.