Four celebrated landscape designers will participate in this year’s Landscape Pleasures: Down the Garden Path, the Parrish Art Museum’s annual two-day horticulture event and fund-raiser.

Scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, June 9 and 10, the program will kick off with a Saturday morning symposium, from 9 am to 1 pm, featuring talks by Eric Groft, Paula Hayes, Doug Reed, and Edwina von Gal. On Sunday, from 10 am to 3 pm, four spectacular private gardens, several of which were designed by the guest speakers, and Bridge Gardens, a project of the Peconic Land Trust, will be open to ticket-holders for self-guided tours. Co-Chairs for this year’s event are: Lillian Cohen, Martha B. McLanahan, and Linda Hackett Munson.

Following a continental breakfast, the symposium will begin at 9 am with a talk by Eric D. Groft titled “The Artful Garden: Creative Inspiration for Landscape Design.” A principal at Oehme, van Sweden & Associates in Washington, DC, Mr. Groft has more than twenty-five years experience in residential, commercial, and institutional work. He has a passion for horticulture and is an industry leader in environmental/wetland restoration and shoreline stabilization/revetment.

Groft’s residential designs include: Manhattan rooftop terraces; oceanfront estates on Long Island; historic properties in Connecticut and Upstate New York; farm properties in northern New Jersey; and a 3,500-acre nature preserve/ hunting lodge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Mr. Groft is a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects and a board member of The Cultural Landscape Foundation.

The 10 am program will feature a conversation between Doug Reed and Parrish Director Terrie Sultan titled “Doug Reed Reveals: Behind the Scenes of the Parrish Landscape Design.” The two will discuss the creative process and inspiration for the design, and give a behind-the-scenes look at the unique collaboration with a team of architects, engineers, and the client. Doug Reed founded Reed Hilderbrand in Watertown, MA, in 1993 and has shared design direction with Gary Hilderbrand since 1997.  He has directed the design and implementation of numerous projects around the country, including the one-acre sculpture garden at the Phoenix Art Museum, the United States National Arboretum, and projects at the historically significant sites of Mount Auburn Cemetery and The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.

Reed is a founding board member and Co-Chair of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and was recently a Resident at the American Academy in Rome.

At 11:15 am, Paula Hayes, a New York-based landscape designer and artist, will conduct a visual tour of the recent projects featured in her new monograph from The Monacelli Press. She will discuss how the intersections between art, design, landscape design, and ecology have formed her approach to making work over the past two-and-a-half decades.

Since 2000, Ms. Hayes has designed private residential landscapes for such clients as: Marianne Boesky, Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn and Nicholas Rohatyn, Rafael and Diana Viñoly, David and Monica Zwirner, Mickey and Jeanne Klein, and Jill Stuart and Ron Curtis.

The final speaker, at noon, will be Edwina von Gal, who will discuss her development as a designer over the years. She has received several awards for her garden and landscape designs, such as the AIA and ASLA Merit Awards, and the Garden Writer Association of America 1998 Quill & Trowel Award for her book Fresh Cuts. Ms. von Gal’s work has been published in such prestigious magazines as:  Architectural Digest, Garden Design, House Beautiful, House and Garden, Martha Stewart Living, NY Times Magazine, and Vogue, among others. She was selected by architect Frank Gehry to design the botanical park for his museum in Panama, the Biomuseo.

Edwina’s notable clients have included: Glimmerglass Opera House in Cooperstown, Great Hill in Central Park, and Rockefeller Center, and private clients Ross Bleckner, Calvin Klein, Richard Meier, Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Riggio, Charlie Rose, Larry Gagosian, and Ina Garten. She is currently at work on a park in downtown Newport, RI with Maya Lin.

Among the gardens on the tour will be: Alexandra Alger and Daniel Chung, designed by Oehme, van Sweden for their home in East Hampton; Gus and Liz Oliver’s in Sagaponack, designed by Edwina von Gal; Theodore and Ruth Baum’s waterfront estate in Southampton; Joan and Mort Hamburg’s delightful Sagaponack garden; and Bridge Gardens on Mitchells Lane in Bridgehampton, a project of The Peconic Land Trust. Complete details will be available on the Museum’s website, parrishart.org.

**A book signing will conclude the symposium on Saturday.

**Tickets for Landscape Pleasures are $150 for Parrish members and $200 for nonmembers and include admission to both the symposium and the garden tours.

[Sponsors, Patrons, and Benefactors at the $350 level and up are also invited to attend a private cocktail party from 6 to 8 pm Saturday, June 9, at the historic Southampton Village home of Alexander and Mary Kathryn Nabab]

To purchase tickets or for additional information on the event, call the Special Events office at 631-283-2118, ext. 42. Tickets are also available online at parrishart.org.

Landscape Pleasures: Down the Garden Path is sponsored, in part, by HSBC Private Bank, Lillian and Joel Cohen, and Linda Hackett/ CAL Foundation.