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If you were to say to someone in Maine that you were taking the ferry to Long Island to visit public gardens nike air max thea baratas mujer , they would look at you and think, "What public gardens" They would conjure up images of an outpost in Casco Bay populated by people who fish for a living and have little time to garden, and by summer residents who might have a small vegetable garden, flower bed or hedgerow of rugosa rose. But public gardens There are none to be found. It's a simple place where the word "ostentatious" isn't used very often. I like Long Island, Maine - my kind of people and my kind of gardens. Last year, I was asked to go to the "other" Long Island, the big island adjacent to New York City, for a Day Trip. Never having been there - and based on some of the things I had read about the Hamptons, the area I would be visiting - I really wasn't looking forward to it. Who wants to drive all day, take a ferry, then drive some more to see "McMansions" or rub elbows in an overpriced restaurant with high rollers from New York City I did make the trip, however, and although it was quite different from Long Island, Maine, it wasn't what I had envisioned. I had a little time to kill before taking the ferry from New London, Conn., so I took a moment to see the newly completed Athenian garden in a pocket park downtown. With a Greek-inspired mural and sculptures, it was well worth the visit. If you have more time to spend in New London nike air max blancas baratas , a half-day visiting the Connecticut College Arboretum also is a must. The ferry ride across Long Island Sound to Orient Point proved pleasant aboard the 1,000-passenger MV John H. There were many interesting sights, including lighthouses and the Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, Conn., where sub-marines are built and main- tained for the U.S. Navy. One of the subs passed the ferry - something I had never seen in Casco Bay! Disembarking from the ferry, I was ready for the glitz and glitter of Long Island. The first hour of driving, however, was through rural farming areas in Suffolk County, the leading agricultural county in New York. Tomatoes were ripe on the vine and potatoes were being dug. After another ferry ride from Shelter Island, I pulled into Bridgehampton, where BMWs, Jaguars and Mercedes replaced the John Deere tractors of an hour earlier. No celebrities were sighted, but I was immediately taken by the miles of privet hedges, Ligustrum spp., most of them sculpted to sharp angles. They delineated property lines and prevented anyone from seeing through them or over them. I became fascinated with the hedges and tried to seek out Vincent Simone, a local woody-plant expert whose books I reviewed this year in PPP's Early Spring issue. Unfortunately, I was unable to contact him until I returned to Maine (see the sidebar at left). On every road I traveled, pruning crews high on ladders used power hedge trimmers to sculpt the naturally gangly privet into something that looked almost perfect. Back in Maine on Long Island nike roshe run nm breeze , a privet hedge might only get pruned once a year, and sometimes that would be with a chain saw. I soon arrived at the Madoo Conser-vancy in Sagaponack and the gardens of Robert Dash, who probably is best known as an artist whose medium is canvas. I quickly found that this multi-talented character - I was going to use the term "gentleman," but I knew he would disapprove - had an uncanny eye for develop- ing landscapes. "I do not paint in the way that I garden or garden as I would employ the brush, although the process is often the same - both are arts of the wrist, the broadest, largest sort of signature, if you will, highly idiosyncratic, the result of much doing, much stumbling, and highly intuited turns and twists before everything fits and adheres to the scale of one's intention," Dash wrote in Notes from Madoo: Making a Garden in the Hamptons (see Book Reviews on Page 132). I felt there could be no better representation of his art than that of his gardens. In May of 1965, Dash first saw the land that was to become his passion. He bought the parcel - a raw piece of agricultural land with an 18th-century hay barn - and by 1967 was on his way to creating Madoo, which in an old Scottish dialect means "my dove." Upon my arrival he quickly took me to his gardens, which were designed as a series of rooms. We strolled past the boxwoods of the knot garden and down the rose walk, which features a brick-lined rill. My eye was drawn through hoops entwined with climbing roses to an exedra, a Grecian brick structure with an oculus and a linear mirror to extend the sightline. This was just the first of many garden designs befitting an artist. I have seen ginkgo groves nike roshe run granates , for instance, but none that utilize tightly pruned boxwoods, or "box balls," as Dash's does. "Rather a wild stroke," he said. We passed four quincunx beds, with a fastigiate yew standing at attention at each corner of each square bed. There was a hermit's hut tucked into another garden, and Dash proudly showed me an oriental bridge surrounded by native plants. As we walked, he explained that the keys to successful growing are lots of manure and proper pruning. Pruning I was looking for privet that didn't look perfectly square, and I found what I wanted. Dash has taken mature privet and treated it in a way that will provide an opportunity for all gardeners with overgrown hedges - an opportunity to make a statement with plants that will have visitors saying "wow," as I did. Imagine 20-foot-tall privets - with trunks the size of small trees - pruned up a good 10 feet. "Now aged and knobby, they still look like the legs of young ballerinas, but young ballerinas wearing old rehearsal stockings, pilled and raddled," Dash wrote in describ-ing the effect. After walking through his many other garden rooms, it was time to have a glass of wine. The wine led to a discussion of what needs to be changed at Madoo, and the amount of grape juice consumed may have influenced
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