Welcome to All in the Detail... I am so glad you are here!
A Classic Summer Cottage Boasts a
Gorgeous Garden
When you have The Hamptons and English Garden in the same
sentence, I just seem to get a little light headed! Now please, don’t get me
wrong. I am by no means a gardener - or anything close to resembling one, I can’t even grow a miserable house plant.
My mother, on the other hand, was the one with the green thumb… actually, I think she had a green
arm! Our house always looked like something right out of House and Garden. Me? Silk
plants shiver when I walk by them in the store “Oh, please don’t take me home!” But I have a strong admiration to those who can make
the Earth look as beautiful as the following.
Back to this beautiful home and ‘serene, structured, and
orderly’ garden that has been featured in Traditional
Home magazine. Prepare yourself to be wisked away to a very magical spot in
The Hamptons.
Jane Goldman grew up with the sight of roses
nodding gently in the Hamptons' famous summer rains. Their scent still perfumes
the air both inside her beautiful family home and in the grand English-style
garden that surrounds it. The 1949 Hamptons shingle-style residence is set far
back from the road on 17 bewitching acres at the end of a driveway that winds
past an orchard.
A classic summer cottage writ large, the home
has gardens that ramble like its roofline. Rather like a series of rooms
furnished with magnificent urns, pillars, fountains, and a stone grotto,
gardens of herbs, vegetables, and many perennials dot the grounds. At the top
of the property is a wilder garden--accessed by stairs--with beckoning
wildflowers, ferns, trails, and sculpture.
Jane, who actually rather enjoys deadheading
and weeding, likes to pick basil from the vegetable garden for bruschetta and
pesto and to relax in the perennial garden, which has a beckoning bench and swing.
The three words she thinks describe the garden best are "serene,
structured, and orderly."
When asked how she entertains outdoors, she
chuckles, "The garden is the entertainment! We have dinner on the lawn and
we do yoga in the upper garden, which is very tranquil, but mostly people just
love to walk around in it."
Inside formal boxwood hedges are informal
plantings of abundant flowers with names so nostalgic they beg to be recited
aloud--delphiniums, dahlias, and digitalis, hollyhocks and hydrangeas, and most
of all roses, roses, and more roses. Roses also cascade around a stone grotto.
They clamber up the wooden lattice fence enclosing the tennis court. They fill
vases throughout the home.
To maintain harmony and flow, the garden
repeatedly uses great quantities of specific roses in two or three shades of a
certain color. Hardy floribundas rather than hybrid tea types were mostly
chosen--to withstand the Hamptons' rainy and/or hot summers.
Jane Goldman collaborates with another Jane,
garden designer Jane Lappin, who first teamed up with the homeowner's mother.
Several garden designers have worked their magic here; Jane called Lappin in
after she renovated the family home a dozen years ago. Lappin says, "I'll
always remember driving up and seeing the driveway and lawn area all ripped up
but feeling immediately how beautiful this old property was. It had mature
trees with great structure lining the perimeter, and behind the house a lawn
with beautiful vistas of Zelkova trees--Jane's favorite." (They're
nicknamed "Green Vase" trees because of their dramatic upward branching.)
"As Jane Goldman visited the great
gardens in England, France, and Italy, it helped shape both our
imaginations," the garden designer says. "It is a pleasure to work
with someone who wants to create something beautiful and knows what she wants."
Lappin recalls how she gasped when she first
saw Jane's gargantuan urns. "They're so big, they look like something
you'd see in front of the New York Public Library," she says. "But
they work! Jane has a great eye."
Throughout the garden, the palette is
dominated by the romantic colors the homeowner loves--whites, purples, and what
Lappin calls "vibrant, cool pinks and the pinkest blues."
At the moment, the two Janes are brainstorming
about a new water feature. "Jane loves a project!" notes Lappin. And
speaking of projects, Jane dreams of one day seeing her daughter married on the
grounds where she has, in fact, promised her a rose garden.
A Zelkova tree enhances the
charm of the guest cottage.
Yes, that's right - The Guest Cottage.
Yes, that's right - The Guest Cottage.
Homeowner Jane Goldman (left)
and garden designer Jane Lappin
(and two very lucky dogs!).
(and two very lucky dogs!).
Showcased in the informal
perennial bed are cleome, iris, hesperis, phlox, alyssum, guara, and nicotinia.
Lovely old-fashioned roses (New Dawn Climbing
Rose) adorn a lattice.
The garden owes its bone
structure to elements like these hedges. Lavender flourishes around the
armillary.
An urn mounted on a pedestal
has a stately air.
Double Delight roses are
tipped with a hue as red as Snow White's lips.
Dahlia Park Princess adds an
energizing jolt of color.
The arbor, one of a pair at the back of the
property, adds timeless grace.
Day Breaker, a floribunda in
a hue favored by Jane's late mother, is planted in a rose garden.
Urns are planted with roses,
geraniums, bacopa, and ivy, imbuing the grounds with a certain air of
classicism.
Simply breathtaking, right?
How can you not be magically hypnotized by all this beauty?
...the beauty of Mother Earth and very good garden designer!
