GARDEN STUDY WEEKEND EXPLORES WAYS SUSTAINABLE PRACTICE AND CREATIVE INSPIRATION ENRICH ENVIRONMENT & AESTHETIC

GARDENING ANEW: FRESH PERSPECTIVES ON THE GARDEN

August 24 -26, 2012

Featured Speaker: Internationally Renowned Landscape Designer Edwina von Gal

Co-sponsored by Hollister House Garden and the Garden Conservancy

The French may have their Riviera but everyone in the garden world knows Hollister House is the place to be in August.

A compelling three-day garden cornucopia features an all-star horticultural speaker lineup – including my garden friends Stephen Orr, Bill Thomas and Paige Dickey –in addition to a swanky cocktail party, champagne breakfast, garden tours, a rare plant sale, book singings and lectures.

With concern for the environment ascendant and the desire to continually refine our own backyard artistry ever present, Hollister House Garden’s third biennial Garden Study Weekend is dedicated to exploring innovative and sustainable ideas about gardening from both the imaginative and practical point of view. The three day, late summer program includes a stylish cocktail party, an all-day seminar, plant and book sales, champagne breakfast and garden tours. The Garden Study Weekend launched in 2008 and has grown to one of the leading summer gardening events in New England.

This year’s program of thought-provoking lectures will examine the topic of Gardening Anew: Fresh Perspectives on the Garden. The featured speaker is Edwina von Gal, principal of her own celebrated international landscape design firm, who will be joined by several outstanding professional horticulturists. They will address a wide spectrum of ideas on new ways to garden encompassing the knowledgeable use of native plants with attention to their form and function, sophisticated solutions found in the soil, and examples of thinking outside the box in the spirit of experimentation and innovation.  The Garden Conservancy, a national organization dedicated to preserving exceptional American gardens, is co-sponsoring the event with Hollister House Garden.

Slated for August 24, 25 and 26, 2012 in Washington, Connecticut, Garden Study Weekend III gets underway at a gala Friday evening cocktail party at the Washington Montessori School where participants may informally mingle with speakers and fellow garden enthusiasts. There will also be the opportunity for early buying at the rare plant sale.

Saturday symposium features wonderful speakers, books and plants  

Saturday’s symposium takes place at the Washington Montessori School in comfortable, air-conditioned spaces with up-to-date lecture facilities. A delicious buffet luncheon, a sale of beautifully written and illustrated garden books, a plant sale featuring a select group of New England’s finest specialty plant growers and a ‘show & tell’ plant talk are included in the all-day agenda.

Stephen Orr, Editorial Director of Gardening at Martha Stewart Living, popular blogger and author of Tomorrow’s Garden: Designs and Inspiration for a New Age of Sustainable Gardening, published in 2011, will moderate the conversation and welcome each lecturer.

Featured speaker Edwina von Gal, known for her elegant, harmonious landscapes that emphasize design blending effortlessly with nature, will speak from personal experience on Altered Perspectives: An Unexpected Life in the Garden. Her approach embraces native plants in spare arrangements that allow the landscape to speak for itself.  Her many high profile projects include work s for minimalists Calvin Klein and Richard Serra as well as creation of the whimsical topiary animals gracing the Channel Gardens in New York City’s Rockefeller Center. She is known for creating “intimate expanses” and her garden designs have been published in the New York Times, House Beautiful, House & Garden, Garden Design and Vogue as well as in many books. She is presently involved in restoring large tracts of her own land in Panama where cattle ranching has seriously compromised the terrain, and is directing the Azuero Earth Project, a Panama-based organization focused on intelligent land stewardship and nature conservation in that country’s endangered dry forest.

Other thought-provoking speakers on Saturday’s seminar roster include:

William Cullina is Executive Director of the 250-acre, organic Coastal Maine Botanical Garden in Boothbay, ME. His topic is What Do You Mean I’m Not a Perennial: Flowering Shrubs for Perennial Companionship, sharing knowledge of his favorite native flowering shrubs and how they bring form, texture, color and wildlife to the garden.

Eric T. Fleisher is Director of Horticulture, Battery Park City Parks Conservancy, New York, NY. He will speak on Managing the Environment: An Adaptive Challenge. Over 25 years, he has brought this 37-acre oasis of parkland on the Hudson River to the forefront as the only public garden space in New York to be maintained completely organically. The solution he has found is in the soil and he will discuss balanced soil ecology, composting, water conservation and nontoxic pest and disease control.

Bill Thomas is Executive Director of Chanticleer Foundation, Wayne, PA. Chanticleer is one of the most exquisite and exciting public gardens in the northeast.  He is a plantsman, designer and a manager of the highest standards and will speak on Chanticleer: An Insider’s View, illuminating the visual, textural, auditory and olfactory dimensions of the 48-acre estate on Philadelphia’s Main Line.

In the early morning and at coffee and lunch breaks there will be opportunities to purchase choice plants for the late season garden from Broken Arrow Nursery (Hamden, CT), Falls Village Flower Farm, (Falls Village, CT), O’Brien Nurserymen (Granby, CT), Opus (Little Compton, RI), Rocky Dale Gardens (Bristol, VT), Sunny Border Nurseries (wholesale, Kensington, CT), Umbrella Factory Gardens (Charlestown, RI) and Avant Gardens (Dartmouth, MA).

Three leading horticulturists -- Page Dickey, prolific garden writer and popular lecturer; Marco Polo Stufano, founding director of horticulture at Wave Hill in the Bronx and co-chair of the Garden Conservancy Screening Committee, and Adam Wheeler, plantsman extraordinaire at Broken Arrow Nursery – will be on hand to offer practical expertise during a Show & Tell demonstration at the plant sale. Garden books selected by Washington Depot’s treasured independent bookseller, The Hickory Stick, will also be for sale, many authored by symposium speakers and available for signing.

 Sunday Open Days Tours Unlatch the Gates to Private Gardens

The weekend also offers participants the opportunities to experience and explore in person several outstanding gardens. Early birds can choose to start the day with a champagne breakfast on the beautiful rear lawn at the romantic country garden at Hollister House in Washington, CT. The grand finale on Sunday is when the Garden Conservancy opens four exceptional private gardens in nearby Litchfield and Roxbury as part of its national Open Days program. Three of them – The Garden of Bruce Schnitzer & Alexandra Champalimaud, the Leva Garden and Opal House gardens – are on the Open Days circuit for the first time. Hollister House Garden is also featured on the Sunday tour.

 Tickets and Registration

Pre-registration is required for the Garden Study Weekend. A combination package including the festive Friday evening cocktail party, the entire Saturday program (with continental breakfast and buffet lunch) and Sunday morning Champagne Breakfast is $245 ($230 for Garden Conservancy or Hollister House Garden members.)

Separately, the Friday evening cocktail party is $75 for non‐members ($65 for GC and HHG members).

The all‐day Saturday ticket costs $160 for non‐members ($150 for GC and HHG members). The rare plant sale is open to the general public after 1 p.m., free of charge.

The Sunday morning Champagne Breakfast is $25 ($20 for GC and HHG members).

Please note that due to parking and seating limitations, tickets for both Friday and Saturday events are strictly limited.

To register, or for more information, go to www.hollisterhousegarden.org or call 860.868.2200.

The Open Days garden tours on Sunday are priced separately at $5 per person per garden. Advance tickets are available online at www.gardenconservancy.org (please allow time for shipping) or in person at the gardens on the tour.

Registration is not required for Sunday’s Open Day tours. Maps will be provided for all participants at Hollister House Garden Study seminar.

Hollister House Garden, created by George Schoellkopf, is a classic garden in the English manner. It has a loosely formal structure informally planted in generous abundance with both common and exotic plants in subtle and sometimes surprising color combinations. Situated on a sloping hill behind an 18th‐century rambling farmhouse, high walls and hedges divide three separate garden rooms and open to create appealing vistas of the landscape.

 The Garden Conservancy is a national nonprofit organization founded in 1989 to preserve America’s exceptional gardens for the education and enjoyment of the public. It partners with garden owners and public and private organizations to harness legal, horticultural, and financial resources to secure a garden's future. The Conservancy also encourages greater appreciation of the important role gardens play in America’s cultural and natural heritage through educational programs and through its Open Days garden visiting program.

Enjoy Learning About the garden At The Garden! NYBG Summer Intensives start soon

Don't Miss Your Chance for NYBG Summer Intensives "It's like summer camp for grown-ups..." Have some fun and gain valuable skills. Register today for a Summer Intensive. Classes start as soon as July 9. The Garden’s world-class instructors offer hands-on, practical advice and bring award-winning experience from their fields of expertise. Class sizes are limited for individualized attention. •   Landscape Design Summer Intensive: More info.  •   Botanical Art Summer Intensives: More info. •   Floral Design Summer Intensive: More info.  •   Gardening Summer Intensive: More info.  For questions or to register by phone, call the NYBG registration office at 800.322.6924. Enroll now!

The Private Oasis: New Book Explores Glamorous & Doable Landscape & Garden Design

Just because I was all whipped up with the launch of my own book, The Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook and so regrettably missed the glamorous garden book party for The Private Oasis: The Landscape Architecture of Edmund Hollander Design heralded by its elegant invitation, is no reason you should miss out:

For anyone who loves gardens and good garden design, this swanky-looking book is a beauty to look at – plus it’s like having your own private landscape architect interpret the looks for your own garden space.  Enjoy a good garden read at the beach  -- but then start taking design notes!

From the Amazon review: Whether a home is a great place to live often depends on what lies beyond its walls. The landscape - when it has a well-thought-out shape and character - gives a home much of its character and satisfaction. In The Private Oasis, two of New York's leading landscape architects, Edmund Hollander and Maryanne Connelly, guide readers through a series of remarkable landscapes and gardens, explaining how to apply their techniques, no matter what the size of the reader's property.

Since founding Edmund D. Hollander Landscape Architect Design in 1990, Hollander and Connelly and the more than a dozen landscape architects on their staff have designed hundreds of residential landscapes, from the palatial to the somewhat more modest. Every landscape, they believe, has a story to tell. The aim of the landscape architect, when working with the homeowners, the site, and the architecture of the house, is to decide what that story is, and see that it is told well.

You can't plant whatever you want, wherever you want it. You can't rearrange the earth arbitrarily. You have to respond to the makeup of the land and its water flows, its vegetation, wildlife and other features using that knowledge to fashion a living landscape. That was a key precept Hollander and Connelly learned from the pioneer of ecological planning, Ian McHarg, and it undergirds all their thinking. Hollander and Connelly marry factors from nature to an understanding of human ecology. Says Connelly: "The solution is always driven by who will be using the landscape and how they will be using it."

The Private Oasis focuses on built elements in the landscape including the entry, seating and gathering places, outdoor dining, swimming pools and water features and tennis courts. It is lavishly illustrated with over 1000 color photographs. A successor volume will focus on plantings. Together, the two volumes will give readers a comprehensive orientation to the making of residential landscapes.

The Horticultural Society of New York Hosted a Glamorous Affair for “The Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook” Premiere

It was, among other superlatives, a delicious success.

Pick any evening in New York City and it’s a sure-fire bet there are dozens of top-tier happenings all over town.

Thursday June 14^th was no exception. 

There was a Chase Bank 5K race in Central Park.

My Metro Hort association had rescheduled their tour of the NYBG Monet Garden to the same night.  Really, what are the chances?

President Obama and First Lady, Michelle were holding court at a fundraiser hosted by Vogue's Anna Wintour and Sarah Jessica Parker – for a dinner at SJP’s West Village home – not too far from our building.  (Shhhh...  As an aside, word here is she and husband Matthew Broderick tried for years to buy in our building, but management at that time was “afraid” stars would bring the paparazzi.  Too bad, they are such nice family people. And true New Yorkers, too.)

The Board here has since given up that “discriminatory” policy and we can quietly boast more than a few artists as building mates, though Julia Roberts flew the coop/co-op.

Enough sidebar scoops.

Just enough so you see what rigorous opportunities peek out from more than a few corners in Gotham.

Further, how tough was it to get a taxi uptown?  Impossible. After far too many minutes, the doorman hailed a yellow hack and I had to beg the off-duty cabbie to get us to The Hort in time. 

See, the thing is, not unlike SJP’s Carrie Bradshaw on-screen character, I am a writer. 

So not like her, I write about food, gardens and restaurants, farmers markets, artisanal food making...

But there was a certain karma-like parallelism in the calendar that night. 

And the fact that I was able to nab this cab – was a made-for-TV moment.

The hack driver spirited us uptown in no time, making up for my last minute script rewrites/cuts, and an all-too-short practice run-through.  

And then, just like that, we were getting off the elevator at The Horticultural Society of New York to be greeted at the elevator by none other than George Pisegna, Director of Horticulture at The Hort.  George is an enthusiastic advocate for The Hort’s mission to sustain the vital connection between people and plants; moreover, he is a garden hero.

He was happy and enthusiastic to see us and elated about the attendance for the evening.

Therefore, I was too. 

Foody's chef Bryan Futerman setting up at The Hort for The Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook reading

Already setting up was chef Bryan Futerman, Foody's Restaurant and Cafe Facebook page, Water Mill, and a featured Homegrown chef from the book.   

It seemed natural that chef Bryan and his inspired grower, Jon Snow, from the Hayground School would have traveled to Gotham together. 

There, leafing through the Homegrown Cookbook and smiling as we entered, was the inimitable garden sprite, Master Gardener, children’s garden mentor, and artist, Jon Snow. 

Later, during the presentation, we would learn in a personal, almost poetic prose, how he works with the children – and the plants – to weave a magical relationship with the natural world.  The kids get their hands in the dirt, grow food and learn to cook through the “Young Chefs Program” – designed by another featured Homegrown Cookbook chef: Joe Realmuto from Nick And Toni's restaurant, who created a program that was long a dream of the restaurant’s late owner, Jeff Salaway.   That dream – “to bring together kids, chefs, and food in the spirit of community” is a true success.

And not unlike an aim of the Homegrown Cookbook.

The program and the children’s garden is delightful.

Soon, Chef Tom Schaudel arrived, his food larder in tow in what looked like an oversized mobile cooler. 

Chef Tom Schaudel, CoolFish, sets up for culinary creation at The Hort

He’s done this before. 

Chef Tom is an experienced, much-loved Homegrown Long Island chef.  Chef Tom Schaudel Restaurants

He presides over a virtual empire of restaurants, strung across the Island like jewels on an heirloom necklace.

In fact, he owns Jewel (!) – his Melville restaurant – and CoolFish, A Mano, Alure, and, along with his daughter, Ross Schaudel Catering.  Schaudel has also authored the highly popular book, "Playing with Fire: Whining & Dining on the Gold Coast"

Fans of the chefs arrived early to meet 

Arriving from an account meeting downtown, Kareem Massoud, Paumanok Vineyards' grape farmer and vintner – and inspired grower to Chef Tom Schaudel as written in the Homegrown Cookbook, bringing two of his family’s estate wines: a Rose and a Chenin Blanc. Both were rich, nuanced, and tasty partners to the evening’s recipes, and very popular with the Hort’s guests, too.

Chef Tom and Bryan made a recipe – or two – from the four recipes every one of the 27 chefs graciously and lovingly provided for the Homegrown Cookbook.

With a large Hort audience of food and drink fans eager for Homegrown food and food stories, the guests were soon asked to take their seats.

With lots of beautiful images of the natural landscapes of Long Island and the behind-the-scene photos of the farms, gardens, waterways, honey and duck growers, oyster and berry farmers, I told the story of the making of The Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook (a coffee table, hardcover cookbook, also available at B&N and now at bookstores) and the larger, food story that evolved in the world surrounding the writing of the book: from Slow Foods to urban farming to the resurgence in Farmer’s Markets and edible home gardening, including the White House’s edible garden. I noted the First Lady is also doing a book tour for her just published book, American Grown.

I also read excerpts from the Homegrown book from the profiles of chefs Tom Schaudel and his inspiring grower partner, Kareem; and Chef Bryan Futerman and his inspiring garden partner, Jon Snow.  

Jon Snow, Hayground School at The Hort

Growers Kareem and Jon spoke about their successful gardening and farming on Long Island.  Noteworthy was the Hayground children’s gardener, Jon, commenting that his 91-year old Mother commented he was a success at long last, because he was speaking at The Horticultural Society of New York!  

Kareem Massoud, Paumanok Vineyards

And speaking of matriarchs, Kareem shared how his mother had a biblical quote framed in their kitchen admonishing, “Son, go and work in the vineyard today.”  Clearly, his mother – and family -- recognized a higher authority to a lifetime of honored labor was calling them.  It shows.  

Following the talk, the guests were led back to the area for the chefs’ food and drink demo highlight part of the evening’s program.

With nothing more than a burner –the chefs made their four-star recipes right at the lovely tables – complete with sweet, picture-perfect pot of herbs growing in tiny wash bins -- set by The Hort.

The Homegrown chefs had the attention of everyone around their individual tables, allowing for interaction with the foodie fans, which were again sipping the crisp, bright flavors of the local Paumanok wines.

Local wine – and beer – naturally pairs better with the food made from the local terroir and sea. 

Just try a Paumanok Chenin Blanc local wine, for example, with oyster farmer, Karen Rivera’s Peconic Pearls – also featured in the Homegrown Cookbook.

Truly, heavenly. 

The two Homegrown chefs wielded their magical alchemy to tease out extraordinary flavors to a delighted audience. They had them crying with gastronomic joy at their creative, distinctive Long Island cuisine.

Chef Tom made his over-the-top Up-Island Lobster Risotto with corn, Heirloom tomato, and basil.  So simple yet so complex and a no-doubt-about-it crazy delicious, with a visual impact too.  Savoring the Up-Island Lobster Risotto is a sensory experience.

The Recipe can be found on page 123 of the Homegrown Cookbook.

Chef Bryan would have made his famous pizza with local vegetables and dough made with fresh, local honey – I am not kidding – but without the wood-burning oven, guests would’ve been shortchanged.  (Gotta get Kalamazoo to donate an oven to the Hort, don’t you think?)

Instead, chef Bryan opted to whip up the Cherry Wood-Smoked Brisket recipe found on page 40.  Again, a few simple, local ingredients, but the end result had guests shaking their heads in culinary wonderment. The meat was melt-in-your-mouth tender but Rocky-strong in its integrity as a star ingredient.

To add to the standout taste, Chef Bryan served the brisket on dark bread infused with sauerkraut (I am not making this up!) with a smoky thousand islandish dressing and a spicy tomato.  

Foody's Watermelon-Red Pepper Gazpacho

Speaking of tomatoes, there are none in chef Bryan’s Watermelon-Red Pepper Gazpacho. For extra credit, Chef Bryan also made the delightful twist on a summer classic – found on page 41 of the Homegrown Cookbook.  

The cool, sweet watermelon flirts with the spicy hot jalapeno right in front of all the others, er, the other locally grown veggies, including onions, celery and peppers.

A perfect appetizer served in small cups for a BBQ or dinner party. Or a main course for an easy-to-make family meal.  It’s sweet and smoky. Dial the flavors up or down…

Book signings accompanied the food tastings.  It was a sell out!  Food and Hort friends from New York, California, North Carolina and the Garden State were there and recognized the Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown lifestyle as featured in the book is one they admire and can cook up at their own home, wherever that may be.

Jennifer Calais Smith (L) & Homegrown author, Leeann Lavin

George Pisegna adds Homegrown to The Hort's Library

George from The Hort honored this author and the Homegrown chefs and their inspired growers by purchasing some books to give as a gift to some key Hort supporters.  Shhh. It’s our secret until they take the wraps off their “Hamptons & Long Island Homegrown Cookbook!”  

And words can’t express how honored I was to sign a book for The Horticultural Society of New York’s illustrious library.  A dream come true…

Thank you.

Cheers to a Homegrown life.