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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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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The Grass Garden at LongHouse Reserve

The Grass Garden at LongHouse Reserve

Eric Groft of Oehme, van Sweden met recently with Jack Lenor Larsen and Abby Jane Brody at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton to discuss revisions to the Grass Garden.

LongHouse, located on 16 acres in East Hampton, NY, is the home of internationally known textile designer, author, and collector Jack Lenor Larsen. LongHouse was built as a case study to exemplify a creative approach to contemporary life-style and to provide visitors the ability to experience art in living spaces.

Inspired by the famous Japanese shrine at Ise, LongHouse contains 13,000 square feet, 18 spaces on four levels. The gardens present the designed landscape as an art form in its own right. The grounds also offer a diversity of sites for the preservation of multifarious species where they can flourish for generations to come.



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A Tribute to OvS Principal Eric Groft

Earlier this fall, Oehme van Sweden Principal Eric Groft had the pleasure of speaking at Guild Hall in East Hampton as part of the Garden as Art: Designers Choice talk and garden tour. For this event, Eric was honored to be introduced by longstanding client (and very good friend) Barbara Slifka. Barbara gave a truly moving introduction of Eric, which we are priveleged to be able to share here:

This is going to be a very personal introduction. You can read all about Eric’s academic and professional background in your programs. I have known Eric for about 25 years. We first met when he was the Project Manager on my Sagaponack beach house, and since then we have worked on two other projects—one in New York and another again in Sagaponack. We have also become good friends.

Working with Eric – and Jim van Sweden and Wolfgang Oehme (the founding partners of Oehme van Sweden) – has been a very educational experience. It was as though someone had lifted a curtain in front of me and I was seeing gardens for the first time. Eric has a truly trained and professional eye. When he is involved on a project, it is the total effect he is interested in, and not just plants or flowers or trees, but the whole landscape. This includes the hardscape – the fences, the paths, the swimming pool, the driveway, the scale of the pots. All of this is important, and all the details matter, because they all add up to the final vision.

Working with Eric, I was exposed to a whole new way of looking at plants – his sense of scale, his interest in texture, his interest in shapes, and his interest in colors (all year long – winter can be beautiful!). All of a sudden I was noticing movement, the way plants flow and interact with each other, and the volume of plants needed to make a statement. For me, being exposed to Eric has brought a wonderful new dimension to my life. I love formal gardens, but once exposed to Eric’s special taste and talent, I hope your eye and personal taste will change forever.

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The Garden as Art

On Saturday, August 28, Oehme van Sweden Principal Eric Groft participated in the “Garden as Art: Designers Choice” talk and tour in East Hampton, New York. The event, sponsored by Guild Hall in East Hampton, featured gardens selected by prominent East End garden designers. The Rifkind garden in Amagansett, designed by Mr. Groft for Oehme van Sweden, was one of six residential gardens showcased on the tour.

Guild Hall, East Hampton New York

The Garden as Art tour is an annual event that has become a weekend-long celebration of gardening in the Hamptons. This year, the festivities included a pre-tour cocktail party on Friday night at a the home of MaryJane Brocks in East Hampton; a continental breakfast at Guild Hall on Saturday morning featuring two illustrated lectures—“Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” by Mr. Groft and “A Botanic Garden by Design” by Brooklyn Botanic Garden President Scott Medbury; as well as a luncheon at the waterfront home and garden of Dorian and Gary Fuhrman on Hook Pond, in East Hamtpon on Saturday afternoon.

Barbara Slifka Introducing Eric Groft's Lecture

Oehme, van Sweden has undertaken a number of landscape architecture projects in the Hamptons spanning the past several decades. The Rifkind garden was designed by Eric Groft in 1992 and the objective was to capture the feeling of farmland turned to meadow. The naturalistic style of design used in the project has stood the test of time well, and 20 years later, the homeowners continue to enjoy the beauty of their garden.

Eric Groft giving his "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow" Lecture

* All photographs courtesy of the East Hampton Star

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ARF Hamptons Garden Tour

Danieli Garden

The 24th Annual ARF Hampton Garden Tour, benefiting the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, was held on Saturday, June 19th. Eight gardens were featured, all in the Springs/Amagansett area of the Town of East Hampton, New York. One of these, the Anna Danieli Garden in the Springs, was the focus of “Hamptons Haven,” an article in the April 2010 issue of Garden Design magazine. Eric D. Groft of Oehme, van Sweden, was the Principal in charge of design of the Danieli garden. Eric, along with nurseryman Holger Winenga of Garden Treasure Nursery, led the tour of the Danieli garden and answered questions.

The day culminated with a cocktail party in the garden of Randy and Jan Slifka in East Hampton, also designed by Oehme, van Sweden & Associates. The Slifka property features a cutting garden filled with a collection of dahlias, a 40’ lily pool adjacent to the screened in porch, a pool for lap swimming, jacuzzi, foxglove border and peony collection.

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