New Rain Garden Installed At Hampton Bays Post Office

Downtown Hampton Bays is another step closer to transforming into a walkable resident-friendly neighborhood with the recent completion of a rain garden outside the Hampton Bays post office.

Last week, Daren Poles of Coastal Landscapes and Designs completed the finishing touches on the 21-foot by 80-foot garden, which features a winding brown-and-white-speckled rock walkway and 15 different types of vegetation, including climbing hydrangeas, swamp milkweed, trumpetweed, and other perennials.

Additionally, a new mahogany walkway leading from the sidewalk along Good Ground Road to the post office’s main entrance on Ponquogue Avenue welcomes residents to what Susan von Freddi of the Hampton Bays Beautification Association referred to as “a very important corner.”

“The post office to me is the core of downtown,” said Ms. von Freddi, who spearheaded the garden's development. “It’s where many people go every day and it's right across from the train station and across from the community center. It needed an aesthetic improvement.”

“It’s a pleasure to look at every day,” Briant Pastrana, the postmaster of the Ponquogue Avenue post office added, praising the association on its efforts to beautify the hamlet. “What they do for this area is remarkable.”

In addition to being aesthetically pleasing, the bioswale is also intended to help manage rainwater runoff from impervious surfaces like the post office’s driveway and parking lot, which when they pond up, can cause erosion and flooding in the street.

Ms. von Freddi, who has served as the association’s president since 2009, explained that the $28,000 project, which took just under a month to complete, would not have been possible without the help and generous $20,000 donation from the Muriel F. Siebert Foundation—headquartered in New York City—as well as a $3,000 donation from Mr. Poles.

The Beautification Association funded the remaining $5,000 through fundraisers and community donations, Ms. von Freddi said.

The Siebert Foundation’s president, Patricia Francy—who often visits the hamlet to go sailing out of the Shinnecock Canal and is also a personal friend of Ms. von Freddi—said on Thursday that she was thrilled to contribute to the project.

“Susan seems to be the hardest working, most tenacious woman in making Hampton Bays the most attractive to the people who live there,” she said. “It’s easy to support her. If she says she’s going to do something, she does it.”

In the coming weeks, Ms. von Freddi will dedicate the garden to the Muriel Siebert Foundation with a cast bronze plaque, and in the near future, she hopes to add a bench to the garden where people can read a book, or enjoy a hot cup of coffee. Also, at the corner of Good Ground Road and Ponquogue Avenue, she plans to showcase a piece of local artwork that will be rotated out each year or once it’s sold.

“I think that would be a fun extra thing to do,” she said. “It’s the prettiest post office in the Hamptons.”