This month sees the publication by Monacelli of Planting Fields: A Place on Long Island. Gilded Age country estates on Long Island’s Gold Coast are not unusual—there were originally 500 of them—but this one is, not least because the house and its 400 landscaped acres have survived, more or less intact, now a public arboretum and state park. I contributed a chapter. I chose to tell the story of Planting Fields more like a novel than a design history. The characters matter: the enterprising Helen Byrnes who starts it all, the talented Grosvenor Atterbury and James Greenleaf who in several important ways set the architectural tone for the house and garden, the able Leon Gillette of Walker & Gillette, the persevering and adaptable Fred Dawson of Olmsted Brothers, the tragic Mai Coe, and of course William Coe, the tough, self-made businessman who develops a green thumb. And as in the plot of any good novel, nothing is inevitable and unexpected events overtake the best-laid plans.
.
