This Hamptons Landscape Uses Reflecting Pools to Mirror the Home's Architecture
"We never approach a project as a house with a garden surrounding it,” says Ed Hollander, principal of Manhattan-based Hollander Design Landscape Architects. “For us, the landscape is a continuation of the architecture.”
His firm already had a decade-long relationship with this Bridgehampton, New York, property when new owners bought it and began building a modern home to complement the existing traditional guesthouse. Collaborating with architect Tom Kligerman, they saw in his contemporary lines and expansive glass walls “an opportunity to use water as a means of reflecting and extending these strong architectural elements into the landscape,” explains Hollander.
A shallow L-shaped pool cradles the home’s dining room and is visible from the entry sequence. This allows the “vertical glass walls to meet the horizontal water ‘wall’ of the pool. At night it’s like a mirror that brings all the elements together,” he says.
Day or night, the water spills off the glass to expand the view through the house to the pollinator meadows and preserve beyond. In addition to visual glimmer, the gentle cascading sound greets guests at the home’s entrance, “subtly drawing you in,” says Hollander’s Melissa Reavis, who led the garden’s redesign.
Framed by a green ribbon of clipped boxwoods mixed with mounds of Japanese anemone beneath pollarded plane trees, the glassy pool and surrounding plantings create a juxtaposition of geometric forms and textures. “There’s a sense of discovery along the way,” says Hollander. “This landscape isn’t static but designed to be lived in and to move through, with different stories opening up depending on the vantage point.”
Water Walls
The contemporary home’s vertical glass walls meet the horizontal water “walls” of the L-shaped reflecting pool, framed by a ribbon of clipped boxwoods.
Reflecting Pool
A shallow reflecting pool lined with river rock mirrors and extends the home’s architecture into the surrounding landscape.
Plane Trees
Pollarded plane trees give statuesque definition without obscuring views.
Walkway
A bluestone walkway lined with boxwoods andbeds of mounded Japanese anemone is a collage of form and texture.
Catalpa Trees
A shady grove of catalpa trees underplanted with Carex lends a lush transition to the sprawling meadows beyond the main house.
VERANDA Magazine
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Featured in the May/June 2024 issue of VERANDA.
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