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Kate Wyckoff-Holmes, an artist who turned to horticulture so she could “paint with flowers,” died August 30 at her home in Key West, Florida. She was 85 and she died of cancer.
Among her horticultural designs are the graves of ballet master George Balanchine and prima ballerina Alexandra Danilova at the Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor. She also designed many Sag Harbor gardens, including those of Thomas Harris, author of “The Silence of the Lambs.” Her firm, Beach Plum Gardens, served Long Island’s South Fork starting in 1982.
When she married Samuel Holmes in 1999 she elected to retain Wyckoff as part of her married name. Born Kate Morgan Wyckoff in New York City, she attended the University of Colorado and then Brooklyn College. She also studied at The New York Botanical Garden. Among her New York landscape designs were a neighborhood park in the Bronx and the garden at the China Institute. Her personal passions included sailing with excursions that took her from Long Island Sound to the Atlantic waters off Block Island and Martha’s Vineyard. She was also an avid student of food, studying cooking with Dione Lucas and collecting more than 150 cookbooks.
In addition to her husband, a retired National Park Ranger, she is survived by a son, Peter Wyckoff, a computer scientist.
Ms. Wyckoff-Homes directed that her remains be used for scientific and teaching purposes before burial. Funeral plans, incomplete at press time, will be sent to family and friends.
on Sep 5, 2016