OvS Receives 2011 LongHouse Landscape Award

The LongHouse Reserve Garden Committee awarded Oehme, van Sweden & Associates the 2011 LongHouse Landscape Award on Saturday, September 17th at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, NY. The award, given for the first time ever to a firm or group, celebrates the “powerful changes that OvS has consistently and continuously brought to the American landscape for the past five decades.” Prior recipients of the award include landscape architect Dan Kiley, American gardener and horticulturist Frank Cabot, and the founder of the Central Park Conservancy, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers.

L-R: Eric Groft, Wolfgang Oehme, Sheila Brady, Jack Lenor Larsen & Lisa Delplace

Following tours of private gardens in East Hampton, a dinner at the home of Alex and Carole Rosenberg in Water Mill and a luncheon at LongHouse, OvS Principals Sheila Brady, Lisa Delplace, Eric Groft and Founding Partner Wolfgang Oehme accepted the award on behalf of the entire OvS team.

OvS Principal Eric Groft

As part of the afternoon’s events, guests enjoyed a panel discussion between Oehme, van Sweden clients Kris Jarantoski, Executive Vice President and Director of the Chicago Botanic Garden and Todd Forrest, Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections at the New York Botanical Garden. The panel was moderated by Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, President of the Foundation for Landscape Studies, and previous winner of the LongHouse Landscape Award.

L-R: Kris Jarantoski, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, and Todd Forrest

LongHouse Reserve exemplifies living with art in all forms. It’s collections, gardens, sculpture and programs reflect world cultures and inspire a creative life.

LongHouse brings together art and nature, and aesthetics and spirit, with a strong conviction that the arts are central to living wholly and creatively. Dedicated to quality and integrity, LongHouse programs encourage a broad concept of learning.

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Seasonal Planting at Americana Manhasset

On the longest day of the year, Oehme, van Sweden had the pleasure of welcoming summer by laying out annual plantings at Americana Manhasset. Eric D. Groft and Hilary Oat-Judge of OvS laid out a vast array of colorful and textural plants from the Otto Keil Nursery with Steven Dubner Landscaping’s masterfully assisting in this ambitious annual ritual celebrating Summer.

Oehme, van Sweden’s 30-year collaboration with the visionary staff at Americana Manhasset has provided visitors to Long Island’s premier haute couture shopping destination with dramatic seasonal plantings to complement Peter Marino’s architecture. Here’s a quick look at this season’s combinations.

Laying out the plants at the Coach boutique

Eric Groft laying out plants at the Chanel boutique

Plantings at Chanel: Colocasia fontanesii 'Black Stem,' Strobilanthes dyerianus, Coleus 'Flirtin Skirts'

The fuchsia stems of the Iresine 'Blazin Lime' interplanted with Gomphrena 'Fireworks' and Strobilanthes dyerianus play off the bright blooms of the Dianthus 'Bouquet Purple' at the Louis Vuitton Boutique

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Garden Conservancy Society of Fellows Visits the Schupf Home

On Friday, June 10th the Garden Conservancy Society of Fellows Tour of the Hudson Valley stopped by the home and garden of Axel and Sara Schupf. It was a crystalline day, clear and in the 70’s, a thunderstorm the night before had cleared out all the humidity and the garden just glistened. The visibility was so clear you could see Bear Mountain beyond the Hudson River from the Library Terrace.

Attendees included Lee Auchincloss of New York City, Susan Burke of New York City, Colin Cabot of Loudon, NH, Page Dickey of North Salem, Ben and Cindy Lenhardt of Winnetka, Il., Joseph Marek of Santa Monica, Ken and Polly Mattox of La Grange, Georgia, Mary Ann Tucker of Greenwich Ct, and Ceasar and Dorothy of Knoxville, TN.

Oehme, van Sweden Principal Eric D. Groft led the tour and later signed copies of the latest Oehme, van Sweden book, The Artful Garden: Creative Inspiration for Landscape Design for each member on the tour.

Axel Schupf with Chapin and Cynthia Nolen of Santa Barbara, CA

 

The group enjoyed fresh strawberries and pastries on the Library Terrace

 

The group descending the Roxybury Granite Steps from the Entry Garden to Forecourt

 

Sara Schupf addresses questions from the group

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Galanthus Elwesii

Galanthus Elwesii - the "Elwesii" Snowdrop

Is there a better announcement of spring then the first glimpse of a Snow Drop? There is none more elegant and regal than this Galanthus elwesii seen at Jack Lenor Larsen’s Longhouse Reserve in East Hampton, NY on Thursday March 10th. While the rest of the east coast was drenched with grueling rain the east end of Long Island was chilly and partly cloudy with brief rays of sunlight peaking through the clouds.

The Elwesi Snowdrop boasts giant white flowers with predominantly green inner segments and broad, often glaucous foliage. It grows to between 4 and 5 inches high (7+cm). As seen here, the Galathnus Elwesii has lovely, nodding, 3 lobed, bell-shaped, clear white, fragrant flowers; and inner segments, resembling a corona (often green-tipped). It blooms here in the late fall, throughout the winter and into spring. This is a great flowering plant for rock gardens, woodlands and the fronts of borders. It performs best in shade in rich, well-drained soil.

Happy Spring!

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Captree Island Project

Oehme, van Sweden recently began work on a new residential project on Captree Island, overlooking Great South Bay, a lagoon that’s situated between Long Island and Fire Island, in New York. The focus of our work is a compound of four houses along the Intra-Coastal Waterway between Fire Island and Great South Bay. The architect for the project is James Bouler (AIA) of Bouler Architecture in Islip, NY, and the interior designer is Jim Wood.

Captree Island and Great South Bay offer a majestic landscape and Oehme, van Sweden is looking forward to making the most of what nature has provided!

Rob Fogle of Groundbreakers Excavation places boulders at front of the house

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Landscaping a Slope at Ridge Hill

Oehme van Sweden is in the process of planting a slope as part of our work at Westchester’s Ridge Hill, a 1.3-million-square-foot regional mixed-use shopping center under construction in Yonkers, NY. Ridge Hill is located along the New York Thruway (I-87) in Yonkers. The property is being developed by Forest City Ratner with H3 – Hugh Hardy and John Fontillas design architects and Studio 5 Architects, Architect of record, DTS of White Plains, NY Civil Engineer. 

Holger Winega of Garden Treasure Nursery delivers 4350 Pycnanthemum muticum to Ridgehill in YonkersNY, pictured here with John Knowlton of Oehme van Sweden and Associates (photo by Eric D. Groft)

Aspen Landscape laying out and planting the Pycnanthemum at Ridgehill

Now that is a steep slope!

Romero Texiera of Aspen Landscape and John Knowlton of Oehme van Sweden (Photo by Eric D. Groft)

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An Eastern Long Island Garden

Recently, Oehme, van Sweden Principal Eric Groft had the pleasure of revisiting the garden of John and Regina Scully, a project he completed a few years ago. The Scully garden is located high on a Louse Point bluff looking over Gardiners Bay in Amagansett. John and Regina Scully were home having come from their native San Francisco to enjoy the fall color of eastern Long Island.

The Scully Home

The View Over Gardiners Bay

The Terrace

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Fall in Bloom at Americana Manhasset

Oehme, van Sweden recently completed a seasonal update to the plantings at luxury shopping destination Americana Manhasset  on Long Island’s North Shore. Steven Dubner Landscaping installs our designs and Otto Keil Nursery supplies the plants. Together with Rebecca Hollander, Marketing Director at Americana, there is a strong sense of collaboration to tackle this design and installation challenge. See how it all came together – view our photos, below.

A window box at the Tory Burch store

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A Visit to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

On Wednesday, October 27th Oehme, van Sweden Principal Eric Groft and long standing client Barbara Slifka were hosted to a lunch and tour of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden by President Scot Medbury and Dr. Gerry Moore, Director of Science. From its humble beginnings as an ash dump in the late 1800s, Brooklyn Botanic Garden has come to represent today the very best in urban gardening and horticultural display, attracting more than 700,000 visitors and serves over 150,000 school children each year.

Scot has been with with the Garden five years and has initiated some ambitious projects including a new herb garden, visitor center and expansion of the local plant collection.

A highlight of our visit to the Garden was the beautiful fall color in the Native Flora Garden, and the emerging colors in the maples located in the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden. To view photos of the beautiful fall foliage, check out the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Flickr photosharing page.

What a delight to revisit this gem of a garden located right in the heart of Brooklyn!

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