Open Garden Days Features Homes In Remsenburg, Flanders

Fred Meyer’s back was breaking, he said late Friday afternoon after working in his Remsenburg garden.

Time was beginning to run short for the Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program on Saturday, May 21, when Mr. Meyer’s garden at 7 Tuthill Lane will be open to visitors, along with two others in Remsenburg and one each in Flanders and Cutchogue, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Time can always be clipped even shorter by bad weather, but Mr. Meyer and two helpers had managed to complete several tasks before an afternoon drizzle set in, among them a thorough cleaning of the fish pond in his garden “room.” Other rooms include a knot garden with miniature boxwoods and white pebbles, a testament to Mr. Meyer’s late wife, Monica, who was British, and another overseen by a large antique copper weather vane in the shape of a pig, which originated with their daughter Jennifer.

“I started my garden, maybe, 20 years ago,” said Mr. Meyer, who was born in Floral Park, started gardening at age 5, planted a victory garden early in the war, and is a former director of planning for Smithtown.

“My wife and I came here to live permanently in ’82 or something like that. Out the back was a solid forest of cedar trees,” he continued. “We always saved the branches from them,” using them to make benches, a table on the deck by the swimming pool and the frame for a mirror, for example.

“Each garden is quite intimate, they just evolved,” Mr. Meyer said. “If you want solace and solitude, this is the place to come.” The rooms have spaces to sit and read or simply “clear your head,” he said.

A garden at 16 Tuthill Lane will also be on the tour—this one featuring mature tree peonies, azaleas and dogwoods edged with a yew hedge, a formal garden of “Knock Out” roses, and two parterres flanking a grass path. Also in Remsenburg is the Wintergreen Garden, at 34 Nidzyn Avenue, which the Garden Conservancy describes as “a 40-year-old garden featuring recycled brick paths forming a Celtic cross, patterned brick patios, seating, statuary, a pool, a fish pond, a children’s playhouse, and a folly.”

The garden of Valerie M. Ansalone at 86 Risa Court in Flanders is said to have winding paths, under an oak canopy, that lead to a 4,000-gallon koi pond, and—for those who’d like to travel a bit farther—that of Arnold and Karen Blair, at 4560 Vanston Road in Cutchogue, is “a park-like woodland garden with numerous spring flowering shrubs and trees, specimen evergreens, antique and salvaged garden ornaments, and 180-degree bay views.”

Admission costs $7 at each garden; children can visit for free. There will also be Open Garden Days on June 11 in Bridgehampton and East Hampton, and June 25 in Amagansett, Bridgehampton, East Hampton, Montauk and Sagaponack.

Call 1-888-842-2442, or visit www.opendaysprogram.org for more information.