Public Gardens Planting The Seeds Of Another Season

Life has been stirring under snow at the South Fork’s public gardens.Talks this month at Madoo in Sagaponack have covered that village’s changing landscape and will tackle the various uses of herbs, with a lecture in Manhattan on landscape architecture planned this Saturday, as well as an ongoing campaign to replace the greenhouse. Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton, whose “LI Grown” food conversations continue this weekend with a focus on appetizers, is getting set to offer community garden plots this coming season.

And at LongHouse in East Hampton, a new horticulturist, Alex Feleppa, has been leading Saturday walks of the 16-acre grounds, pointing out textures and shapes in plantings like paper bark maples, witch hazels and other evergreens and deciduous plants.

“It’s gorgeous,” said Mr. Feleppa, who introduced the winter walks as a way to get more people acquainted with the gardens and sculpture park at LongHouse. “Americans are so flower-centric as a nation, we think that all that exists in a garden is flowers and color. There’s so much more than that, there’s texture, form … so many shades of green.”

When he’s not leading tours, shoveling snow or inspecting deer damage, Mr. Feleppa has been hunting for inspiration, desk “piled high with magazine clippings and plant catalogs with all these wonderful things,” he said. LongHouse is in the throes of expanding both its floral displays and its art displays, and Mr. Feleppa has also been working with Jack Lenor Larsen, the reserve’s founder, and Bonifacio Rojas, the head gardener, on the former project in particular.

Mr. Feleppa grew up in Amagansett—his parents, Sue and Rich Feleppa, owned the Royale Fish restaurant in Amagansett and then East Hampton—and got his start in horticulture at Marder’s in Bridgehampton, working as a cashier and delivery driver and moving on to tree and shrub sales—“Silas Marder and I went to nursery school together,” he explained.

He managed a Midtown garden shop, trained at the New York Botanical Garden and was director of horticulture for the Horticulture Society, and he wasn’t aware that LongHouse existed until he was invited to a wedding there in 2005.

“Which kind of goes back to the winter walks—I’ve had some people on the winter walks coming here for the first time,” he said this week.

As beautiful as the reserve’s bare-bones structure may be in winter, LongHouse hopes to extend and expand its color display through an initiative called “LongHouse in Bloom.” To that end, 27,000 bulbs were planted last fall when Mr. Feleppa came on board, and donors are being courted online to pay for bulbs and perennials to improve the Red Garden, a new west border, and the north slope of the amphitheater at LongHouse. Contributors’ names will be listed in a newsletter and eventually on signs at the reserve.

“We really want to try to take it to the next level,” Mr. Feleppa said. “Before Valentine’s Day we did a promotion specifically for expansion of the Red Garden and had great response to that.” Already known for azaleas that bloom in late May, the Red Garden will see an infusion of camellias, poppies, peonies, native plants, and chocolate cosmos to carry the bloom sequence through the summer.

“We’ll be planting heavily this year, but it will be this year and [also] the years following,” the horticulturist said.

LongHouse will open for the season on April 25. In the meantime, Mr. Feleppa’s walks continue at 1 p.m. on Saturdays, and he’ll give a hands-on workshop on rose pruning on April 18.

Further information can be found at longhouse.org, while information about ongoing and upcoming programs at Madoo, which reopens May 8, can be found at madoo.org, and about those at Bridge Gardens, which reopens April 4 and is run by the Peconic Land Trust, at peconiclandtrust.org/bridge_gardens.

This year, for the first time, all three gardens will coordinate their celebration of National Public Gardens Day on May 8. While in past years they’ve celebrated with a day of free admission, they’ll offer three guided tours instead, according to Kathy Kennedy of the Peconic Land Trust.

“This year I thought we could do a little more, and suggested we do a day of guided tours at each garden that might expand on the day of free admission to encourage more interest,” she explained. Matko Tomicic, the executive director at LongHouse, and Alejandro Saralegui, the director at Madoo, agreed—so, the one-hour tours will begin at LongHouse, followed by free time for lunch, and then proceed to Madoo, with a tour at Bridge Gardens with garden manager Rick Bogusch topping off the day.