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A STYLIZED LANDSCAPE WITH ARCING CURVES AND SHARP ANGLES GIVES A BRIDGEHAMPTON HOME A FRESH, MODERN SPIN

Landscape designer Joseph Tyree has many clients who have never spent much time with a trowel or a trug—and never want to. But that doesn't mean they aren't interested in gardens. In many cases, it's just the opposite.

"They have a strong sense of what they want," says Tyree. "They just don't necessarily want to be out there doing it."

"Elegant but hip" was what banker, dedicated equestrian and imaginative host Chad Leat wanted when he embarked on renovations that tripled the size of his Bridgehampton home and transformed the landscape around it. Those were his instructions to Hamptons architect Preston Phillips, who took the rustic, barn-style house and, with the lofty spaces and modern materials of his expansion, created the hip home of his client's dreams.

Tyree took it from there, "responding to the architect's plans" as he says he does with almost all of his projects. "I knew it was going to be pretty spare and modern," says Tyree, who was well acquainted with Phillips and his work.

That suited the landscape designer just fine. "Most of my gardens are fairly spare," he explains. "That's what I like. I think gardens are supposed to be restful. If they look complicated, they take a lot of work and, to my mind, that's not how it should be."