July 15-31, 2008

DIRT

LOOK BEYOND THE EXTRAORDINARY ART INSTALLATIONS AND TO THE GARDENS OF THE WATERMILL CENTER

Robert Wilson's Watermill Center sits upon a mount like an industrialized crown jewel, ringed by gardens that are almost imperceptible—so deft is the hand that formed them. I have watched the Watermill Center come to life over a period of 16 years. The focus and discipline is arts of all kinds, which carries over into the garden areas. What was six tumbled-down, deer-ravaged acres have been made magical here. The home of a Western Union switching station has become an "Academy for the 21st Century." The deer problem was solved with a serious fence. The land encouraged the gardens with its natural sloping conditions, drainage and modulated sun—terrific visually and horticulturally—into a place where the visual takes center stage.

The saga of the new copper beech allée is the latest of many great stories about the theatrical genius and founder Robert Wilson and his unerring taste. As he travels the world directing operas, creating installations in museums and reinventing classics for the Comedie Francaise or The Berliner Ensemble, he takes in everything he sees. Last summer, he decided to create an allée of copper beeches, only copper beeches of a certain fastigiate kind—no other trees would do. But where to get them? How to pay for them? Once he learned that a truckload of these very trees was on its way from Oregon to Long Island, Wilson simply campaigned to raise the money to secure them.

There wouldn't be an elegant soft Cryptomeria screen separating Watermill Towd Road from the Woodland Paths if not for a similar crusade in 2002. And should you detect some similarities in plants between here and East Hampton's LongHouse Reserve, it is because all the bamboo, countless ferns and many other exotics that are a result of the largesse of LongHouse founder Jack Lenor Larsen and his honcho, Matko Tomicic. From the land itself, high and low bush blueberries, ferns of every stripe and native oaks have been dug up and rearranged and augmented to not only suit Wilson's vision, but to reforest the area as well. Then there are the pleasing plants like Leucothoe and Cimicifuga, Nandina, Hellebores and Rodgersia that have slipped into the mix.