In East Hampton, New York, a community situated at the far eastern end of Long Island, several large estates are located. The Creeks, the estate of the late Alfonso Ossorio, was perhaps the most outstanding of them all. Ossorio, an internationally known artist, blended art and horticulture in a way that only he could do.

The original owner of the property was Albert Herter, whose grandfather and father started Herter Brothers, foremost designers of American decorative art, contemporary with Tiffany during the 1800's. Herter, his wife, and his mother were involved in the construction of the main house, a U-shaped building facing Georgica Pond with the Atlantic Ocean two miles to the south across the pond. The interior of the house contained a large studio which Ossorio used as a sunken music room. Herter was a muralist and portrait painter who found this room somewhat inadequate for his purposes, so in 1912 a separate studio was built.

The original property had, in addition to the house and studio, a formal garden, a vegetable garden, garage, guest house, and sixty acres of woods with private roads, which twisted and turned to bridge the creeks for which the property was named.

The property is somewhat triangular. The Montauk Highway forms the base of the triangle, and the East Creek and the West Creek form the other two sides. Along West Creek a marsh has developed due to the shifting of Georgica Pond. Ossorio constructed a sea wall along that creek to save his land and removed the guest house, which was in the way, replacing it with a gate house at the highway.

Georgica Pond may occasionally cause problems, but it is a precious body of water. Salt water fish still spawn in it; swans live and breed there. It also provides a barrier to salt spray from the Atlantic Ocean, except during strong, southwest storms.

The largest of the four elements is a flight of steps that ascends with risers that become higher the farther up one goes, symbolizing that the climbing gets harder as one goes higher. On the other side, a red dagger has fallen from the sky and has split the wall. The split wall is counterbalanced by a black triangular shape rising from the front of it and a black sphere that is rising or descending behind it.

Mrs. Herter set up a traditional Nineteenth Century garden on the estate. Around the front circle were sixteen boxwood beds, which were cut low and covered with straw during the winter. There were grass tennis courts and trellises with trumpet vines and roses. The front gardens' colors were shades of yellow and orange while the gardens facing the water were done in blue and white. The house was beige stucco with green trim and a copper roof. The gardens around the house provided cut flowers for the Herters' weekend visits. Each flower was placed in an individual glass tube. Ossorio discovered thousands of these tubes when he bought the property in 1951.

Ossorio had always been a very busy artist so did not take an active interest in the landscaping of the estate until the late 1960's. Edward Dragon, who also lived at The Creeks, brought two plants home from an art show at Guild Hall. One of these plants was a potted Cedrus atlantica 'Glauca' (over ten meters tall in 1990). These plants helped Ossorio realize that the gardens were not very appropriate to his lifestyle. The plantings were originally intended for viewing during the growing seasons, but he and Dragon lived on the estate the year through. And since the old caretaker had died, the gardens were a shambles.

An old friend and botanist at the New York Botanical Garden, Dr. Rupert Barneby, convinced Ossorio to use evergreens throughout the gardens for year-round enjoyment. He also helped with endless details and in planning and creating much needed vistas. Barneby had grown up in English gardens and had executed many garden designs in this country.

In 1969 a sea wall was built along the west side of The Creeks and work began in earnest upon the landscape. For the next ten years, his painting largely ignored, Ossorio became deeply enmeshed in a new art form combining the products of nature and man into a unique creation.

Evergreens were put at the edges of the roads and worked back into the grounds. Natural growths of Pinus rigida, Juniperus virginiana, and Nyssa sylvatica were retained as background facets of the landscape. All of the big plants were in place by 1979, but the work on the landscape did not stop and was to go on indefinitely. Pruning was constantly needed, and, since plants cannot be held to a small size indefinitely, transplanting often became a necessity.

The problems and difficulties encountered in establishing this landscape were seemingly endless. Much trial and error learning took place, and the help and advise of many people were utilized.

In hindsight, Ossorio concluded that although it was fun to put in an instant garden, it was much more enjoyable to start with younger plants and watch the garden develop. A preferrable approach would have been to put in fewer big plants for immediate effect and work with smaller plants for the bulk of the landscape. Within five years after planting, a shocked, bigger plant was neither as beautiful nor as healthy as a smaller plant in the same location would have been.

For a variety of reasons, many plants which were worked into the landscape did not survive. Their replacement resulted in much additional expense. Sometimes the purchased plants were not in the best condition. Root girdling, especially with potted stock, was a major defect in purchased plants. Some plants thrived for several years and then, for no apparent reason, suddenly died, strangled by their own roots. Many hours were spent cutting girdling roots on older plants.

The most common factors contributing to the loss of plants resulted from careless planting. Many plants were planted too deeply and suffocated. Either the hole was too deep from the outset or excess organics and loose soil in the bottom of the hole allowed the tree to settle too deeply. A constant watch was maintained for too deeply planted trees, which were removed from the ground and replanted more shallowly.

Air pockets around the planted ball also contributed to many losses. Ossorio insisted on puddling any newly planted tree to eliminate such air pockets.

Significant time and effort were expended finding the desired plant material. During the late 1960's there was much less interest in unusual conifers, and they were more difficult to obtain.

At the turn of the century much intelligent planting was done in the Southampton area by Long Island landscapers. The interest in unusual plant material declined after the "Crash of '29" and remained at a nadir through the war years. The 1960's saw a revived interest in distinctive landscaping, but most of the older nurseries had moved out of the area and garden shops were growing little of their own stock and were not as knowledgeable. West coast sources became most important for materials as Long Island nurseries either did not have the desired stock or did not know if they had the stock because the production of unusual plants was in a rather chaotic state.

The black, oval pool is located within a red, white, and blue circle with contrast sufficient to create a mysterious, dark body of water. The dark color eliminates the glare of a light-bottomed pool and makes people appear much nicer when swimming against its dark background.

 Diligent searching resulted in the location of material which sometimes needed much work to make it useable. Twelve golden hemlocks, once used as hedging in a defunct nursery, were obtained and required several years of very select pruning to revert from a multi-stemmed habit to a tree-like form. Such work was useful in that many new things were learned, but also much time was wasted.

If Ossorio had known more about plants, he would have dealt with small producers to buy young, otherwise hard-to-find, material to grow to a useable size. But, of course, it was always easier for a novice to go to a garden center and see everything laid out.

The major precept for using conifers in the landscape was to have a variety of color through the months of no deciduous greenery. Ossorio, with the visual acuity of an artist, was not satisfied with merely the usual, somber, dark natural green color of most conifers. He made use of a variety of greens, blues, and yellows. A richness was possible right through the winter. In fact, such a landscape rapidly gets to a stage where one resents the intrusion of the "rather vulgar" deciduous trees, imposing the lushness from a different botanical era.

As mentioned earlier, background plants of native forms were retained. For example, enormous Juniperus virginiana plants, now located near his swimming pool, were seedlings at the edge of a cutting garden in 1952. They are now high and very elegant. Their beauty is basically natural as they had only been sheared three times during the last ten years of Ossorio's life. Since they are from seed, each one has a little of its own character. Another native Juniperus virginiana at the edge of a different former cutting garden, presently over 100 years old, was riddled throughout with poison ivy and bittersweet. The interior was cleaned out, and the plant made into a vase shape with a stainless steel sculpture erected to emphasize its structure.

The largest sculpture on the estate, this wind tower has a shape opposite to that of a conifer and appears as if it fell from the sky, imbedding itself in the earth. The propeller turns in the slightest breeze, as it often does when the surface air is calm, showing that the air is made up of several layers of invisible colors. If the propeller turns too rapidly, its shape causes it to shudder to a stop and reverse direction, which prevents damage in high winds.

Ossorio's landscape makes extensive use of garden sculptures. In the beginning of the landscaping process, as the woods were cleared to admit more light, various shapes were placed five to seven meters high at the tops of cut-off trees. They were various, simple shapes and were intended to carry the eye upward until the new plants had grown. Some of these sculptures disappeared as the trees decayed and fell; others became overgrown with new foliage; but many still remained.

Four black and white towers, with globes at their summits to represent dehiscent buds, were constructed. A special entrance sculpture was designed; wind towers were built, and many other sculptures were placed throughout the estate. All these sculptures related to plants and their environment and were a reflection of the imagination of the artist who created them.

One major problem to be considered when landscaping the grounds was whether to plant botanically or esthetically. The solution was to compromise and emphasize aesthetics while allowing for botanical relationships. Growing conditions in certain parts of the property dictated which species would be grown there. For example, Chamaecyparis thyoides was used in swampy parts of the estate.

The front court of the house was planted with forms of Cedrus atlantica 'Glauca'. A large blue cedar was centered in the view from the front entrance of the house. A pendulous plant was put in the foreground, and fastigiate plants created a background. The whole scene was framed with a pendulous cedar on each side, which was staked and trained to a height of five meters.

Plants used against the house showed up very well against its black stucco and white trim. The house was designed for strong contrasts and rich colors and served very well as a background for brightly-colored conifers.

From time to time the future of The Creeks worried Ossorio. He hoped that when he could no longer take care of the property, it would be maintained as an arboretum and not go the way of many other Long Island estates. The Creeks was a living thing, with new problems every year, but it also gave extraordinary rewards to Alfonso Ossorio, its owner, benefactor, and chief designer.

 ALFONSO OSSORIO 1916-1990

On Tuesday, December 4, 1990 I flew to the East Coast to visit some friends and revisit some plant collections and arboreta. When I called Dianne that evening, I learned that Alfonso Ossorio had died that same day.

Spending a day with Alfonso at his estate, The Creeks, near East Hampton, Long Island, was always one of the high points of any of my trips to the East Coast. I went ahead and spent a day at The Creeks, videotaping the collection in the rain, and remembering my previous visits and telephone conversations with Alfonso.

The Creeks was the most outstanding private conifer collection that I have seen in this country. Ossorio was an artist, who for the past twenty years worked his artistry on plants. He used the varying colors, textures, and shapes of conifers to create a living, horticultural work of art that brought him and many others great pleasure throughout the seasons of the year.