Innehållsförteckning för May/June 2024 från Veranda

SEASONAL SHOW For her clear resin and acrylic pieces, Irish artist Sasha Sykes (at right in her studio) captures ephemeral moments from the Wicklow mountain landscape by embedding wildflowers, algae, and fungi foraged at different stages of their life cycle. She uses tweezers to place smaller stems in 3D molds (above, with wispy old-man’s beard); her Blooom! screen (top) includes hydrangea and delphinium. sashasykes.com PAINTERLY COMPOSITION Within the carved metalwork of Polish artist Marcin Rusak’s modernist furniture, textural decaying flowers and leaves contrast smooth clear, black, and white resins. In the Flora Cabinet 176 (below), part of his collection with Twenty First Gallery, he cast discarded plants in translucent black resin to resemble a Flemish painting scene where foliage floats below the water’s surface. marcinrusak.com…

Bridgehampton, New York 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’…

EVERYONE IS TALKING about Hell’s Gate. Skimming the western side of Fraser Canyon, roughly 140 miles east of Vancouver, I stand and lean across the aisle of the coach to get a clearer view down into the ravine. There, upriver, the rock faces suddenly choke inward, squeezing the mint green water like a craggy corset. The river spits and churns in the narrow passage; above, a fire red footbridge stretches across the rocks. Against the enormous canyon walls, the bridge appears almost dainty, as if I could pluck it between thumb and forefinger. In his journal 19th-century explorer Simon Fraser characterized the rapids as “a place where no human being should venture.” Following his advice and the historic rail line charting our journey, we don’t stop. We are on Rocky Mountaineer’s…

FAME COMES IN MANY FLAVORS, from veneration to scandal, and can accrue to houses as much as to people. Atlanta’s Villa Juanita has long been the kind of It girl house locals are intensely curious about. “If you live in Atlanta, you’ve always wanted to look behind those walls,” says designer Heather Dewberry of Huff-Dewberry, Inc., referring to the 10-foot stone enclosure surrounding the seven-acre property. The house was built in the 1920s for a pair of socialites while they were honeymooning in Europe. As it neared completion, they added further Mediterranean accents likely inspired by their travels. On their return they entertained wildly for a few years, then separated. The so-called Great Gatsby House fell into a spell of dignified repose from which it only recently stirred. In 2016…

TRADITIONAL, BUT NOTHING STUFFY or dull.” Such was the mandate given to architect Stan Dixon by his clients, a young couple who’d purchased a 27-acre parcel of land on John’s Island, 15 minutes south of Charleston, South Carolina. They wanted something with a strong sense of history, yes, but their request related as much to what would happen outside their intended home—in the land, the trees, the waterways—as inside. “This is a family who really needed to be in nature, who craved a deeper connection to the outdoors,” says Dixon, noting the husband grew up on a farm in Kentucky, she in West Virginia. As newlyweds they’d settled in Charleston’s historic South of Broad neighborhood—dizzyingly charming, but with little room to stretch out. And with twins on the way, they would…

AT A RECENT DESIGN CONFERENCE, I moderated a panel about outdoor living with landscape designer Wambui Ippolito, designer Laura Kirar, and Arteriors VP of marketing Barb Fuller. Beyond the first look at Arteriors’ new outdoor collection and the extraordinary outdoor living spaces designed by Kirar and Ippolito, what stuck with me most was something Ippolito said about her landscape design practice: that she leans on Appleton’s prospect-refuge theory as a guide. The theory posits that we are drawn to spaces that provide clear views of our surroundings as well as a sense of enclosure. This comes from our evolution: As predators, we needed to be able to see opportunities for capturing prey without revealing our location to prey or other predators. “Growing up in the Rift Valley in East Africa,…

HOW THRILLING to glance down at the time and tilt suddenly into the ancient. Glowing orange behind Roman numerals that sparkle with yellow gold and diamonds is the gemstone carnelian. And what a choice this chalcedony is: Joining green aventurine and turquoise as the signature dials of Rolex’s Oyster Perpetual Day-Date 36 timepieces, carnelian has been drawn from the earth for human decoration since the Neolithic period. Easily pierced to craft beads and later carved into seals and adornments, the soft stone capturing the colors of the sun became a favorite of kings across millennia. The Romans believed it to be a stone of luck and courage—today, perhaps, offering talismanic reassurance for managing the march of time.…

WE ARE GREENHOUSE DREAMERS. We fill conservatories and sunrooms with botanical housemates, cohabiting in a horticultural happily ever after. We delight in brilliant displays of calyx and corolla, surrender to the verdant serenity of leaf, and inhale the gift of oxygen. We bring the outdoors in. Or do we? In our most treasured spaces, we want to feel as connected to nature as possible. But during the dog days of summer, a window-clad room easily overheats, and in winter the panes of a conservatory can render a room more like a walk-in refrigerator. Life indoors—both plant and human—requires some thoughtful climate control. The good news is that the atmospheric ideal lies within reach. An efficient HVAC system turns out to be a sunroom’s closest ally. Trane Residential’s advanced products heat,…

FAR FROM THE TROPICAL CLIME of Bali or Brazil, it’s not very common—let alone practical—to build a home in the United States in which the barriers between indoors and outdoors can almost completely disappear. But that is precisely the type of house a couple of loyal Michael S. Smith clients found in a lushly verdant corner of Los Angeles’s Holmby Hills neighborhood. Smith, the acclaimed L.A.-based interior designer whose long list of repeat clients also includes the Obamas and Shonda Rhimes, describes the house as being “almost woven throughout the garden, with unexpected points of union between the two.” The prime three-acre property, which feels deeply private yet has choice views over Los Angeles, was home to several Hollywood legends over the course of the 20th century. The present 14,000-squarefoot home…

LIKE A VIVID MIRAGE, Jan Salta’s first memories of Palm Springs in the late 1960s flash in Technicolor. Arriving in Southern California as a flight attendant, the native midwesterner joined her roommate on a jaunt to explore the desert town. She was soon enamored of its vibrant palette—a city bursting with hot pinks, lime greens, and sunny yellows. “I remember thinking that I would love to live here one day,” says Jan. But it wasn’t quite time. She met her husband, Mike, after moving back to the area in the mid-1970s. The couple settled elsewhere in California, eventually buying a home in Newport Beach and consulting with designer-builders Melinda and Fari Pakzad of luxury handcrafted furnishings company Ebanista to help with the renovation. “My husband was leery about hiring a…

SOCIAL CLIMBERS Designer Hutton Wilkinson’s earrings for Tony Duquette illuminate gold leaves with sparkling peridots while faceted aquamarines suggest a spring vine in bloom. SUPER BLOOMS The Mediterranean’s sun-kissed flora—lavender, jasmine, heather, and agapanthus—inspires the shimmering palette of this multicolor sapphire necklace from Wempe’s atelier. GARLAND STATE Like a crown stolen from a faerie queen, the Frivole bracelet from Van Cleef & Arpels wraps the wrist in a brilliant seven-flower embrace of white gold and nearly 300 diamonds. SPRIG FEVER Spying petallike promise in aquamarine stones, designer Sorab Bouzarjomehri gathers them into diamond-centered flowers on a pavé green diamond stem for Sorab & Roshi’s pin of botanica vérité. For buying information, see page 40.…

FOGO ISLAND IS A WINDY PLACE. There’s muscle to the gusts that sweep across the island in Newfoundland along the easternmost coast of Canada and in fact North America. So to build furniture in a 100-year-old wood building set on piers requires some concessions. “On especially windy days the building shifts, and so we have to adjust lathes and other machines more regularly,” explains Michael Murphy, who leads Fogo Island Workshops, the contemporary craft studio born of the now-famed Fogo Island Inn. “But it’s worth it.” Around him, tall Gothic-style windows frame sun-dappled views of the North Atlantic. And yet the worthiness Murphy speaks of goes beyond views to the top of the earth. It’s in the vigor and ingenuity of a design heritage astir on the island, lighting an…

BUNNY WILLIAMS “Our winners strike a beautiful harmony between home and garden. There’s conscious choice behind each plant,” says the interior designer whose latest book, Bunny Williams: Life in the Garden (Rizzoli), was released this spring. PETER LYDEN “What unites this year’s gardens are their invitations to explore,” says Lyden, president of the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art. “Pathways welcome you into hidden oases throughout the landscapes.” METHODOLOGY VERANDA editors chose the top 22 entries for blind judging by Williams and Lyden. For information and submission guidelines for the 2025 awards, see veranda.com/most-beautiful-gardens-2025.…

Dorset, England THERE’S A REASON Dorset, England, is recognized as one of 46 regions in the United Kingdom as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty—its emerald expanse is archetypal British countryside. And it’s there that a 7.3-acre estate, complete with medieval moat, offered landscape architects Hugo Bugg and Charlotte Harris of London-based Harris Bugg Studio the opportunity to work in such a pastoral jewel. The property owners turned to the repeat RHS Chelsea Flower Show winners to reimagine the 1.7-acre garden after an addition to the existing historic farmhouse was complete and to “bring the rolling hills and meadows closer to the house,” says Bugg. Better connecting the home to the wider landscape entailed removing dense evergreens and rhododendrons that tunneled around the house. “The heavy Victorian shrubbery was a…

A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE Pages 28–29 Vintage wrought-iron chair and Avondale urn planter, Elegant Earth. Fern, Shoppe. Fiddle-leaf fig tree, Collier’s Nursery. Page 30 Large and Small classical tiered fountains, Cheshire urn planter, Antique architectural frieze with dolphins, and Antique faux-bois bench, Elegant Earth. Antique birdcage, Henhouse Antiques. Page 32 Veranda urn & plinth and English Village urn on large estate pedestal, Elegant Earth. Page 34 Anduze urn and Classical urns with handles, Vintage candelabra, and Vintage Zerbee lounge chair, Elegant Earth. Tropical plants, House Plant Collective. Parlor palm, Collier’s Nursery. BLOOMS ETERNAL Pages 54 and 56 Sasha Sykes round resin samples, Voltz Clarke Gallery. VILLA BON VIVANT Interior design: Heather Dewberry and Will Huff; huffdewberry.com. Architecture: Charles Heydt; pakheydt.com. Landscape architecture: Kaitlyn Peake; carsonmcelheney.com. Pages 98–99 Sofa…