Gardening Expert Collects Rare Specimens

Rare Trees Take On New Life

Aug. 23, 1992

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August 23, 1992

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WHEN Eric Lustbader bought his wooded acre in Southampton eight years ago, all he wanted was an austere Zen garden with gravel and two trees.

"As I became more steeped in the culture of Japan, which is what I write about," said Mr. Lustbader, the author of international thrillers like "The Ninja" and "Black Heart," "I began to appreciate the Japanese love of gardens."

He and his wife, Victoria, scoured local nurseries and stumbled into Marder's in Bridgehampton. Overwhelmed by the number of dwarf Japanese maples, Mr. Lustbader bought so many that his tiny Zen garden was soon transformed into a lush miniature Japanese garden with a curving dry stream, rocky ledges and exotic bamboo. Today the acre is carefully planted with daring and sophisticated arrangements of rare horticultural specimens, with barely an inch to spare.

Mr. Lustbader is but one of the many collectors of rare and exotic trees on the East End. For many it is more than a hobby, an obsession perhaps.

Tree collecting is not new to the East End. In the early 70's Alfonso A. Ossorio, the artist and sugar magnate, began amassing thousands of rare and sometimes bizarre specimens of evergreens on his 60-acre estate, the Creeks. Horticulturists and tourists have come from all over the world to visit his arboretum.

Ben Heller, the real-estate investor and art collector and dealer, also collected rare and beautiful trees in the 70's and 80's. Mr. Heller is known to have attended a four-day tree auction in Pennsylvania in a driving rainstorm to dig eight specimens. Putting House and Trees Up for Sale

Now, for a number of reasons that include wanting to live closer to Mrs. Heller's busy daughter, the actress Kyra Sedgwick, and their grandchildren, Mr. Heller is retiring to a mountaintop in northern Connecticut. His East Hampton house and most of the trees are up for sale.

Mr. Heller is taking eight trees, he said, but that will not "disturb the beauty of what I am leaving." He estimated that it will cost him $30,000 to $40,000 to move the trees safely. "I hope whoever buys my house will treasure my trees as much as I do," he said.

The restaurateur Warner LeRoy was also an early collector. He said he became involved with the trees while building the Great Adventure amusement park in Jackson, N.J., in 1975. "We did massive landscaping, and I was always at the nurseries."

A few years later he bought a 60-acre forest in Amagansett, which he cleared except for the beech trees. He created ponds, waterfalls and sweeping lawns with abounding vistas and bought rare trees. "Big ones," Mr. LeRoy said. "And that's very dangerous. I've planted trees 50 feet high, and I've lost 10 percent of them.

"I was very influenced by Ossorio. I traveled to Canada, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania. I went at it with a passion."

Mr. LeRoy said he had at least 600 trees of 100 varieties. "I have great weeping trees," he said, and "a fantastic Colorado weeping spruce that's in the shape of an elephant." Rare Dwarf Cypress

Mr. LeRoy loves to boast about his 40 specimen Japanese maples; 90 azaleas, some of which are 25 feet across; 11 prize lemon maples and a rare 75-year-old dwarf Hinoki cypress, which, he said, took him 15 years to pry loose from David Seeler, owner of the Bayberry Nursery in Amagansett. "I still own one that is larger," Mr. Seeler said.

Although local nursery men say they haven't seen him lately, Mr. LeRoy said he planted four rare trees this year. "It's my garden," he said, "and I'm still collecting."

The emphasis today be moving toward an overall look, but there is a new breed of collectors in the Hamptons who are trying to cultivate unusual specimens and who are collecting them assiduously.

"I'm looking at my trees, all 200 of them," said Louis K. Meisel in a telephone interview from his house in Sagaponack. "At last count I had 93 collections, and one of them is trees."

He also collects lawn sprinklers, Clarice Cliff pottery and turn-of-the-century ice-cream scoops.

Mr. Meisel, who built his house in 1985, owns eight acres of former potato fields. He is president of the Louis K. Meisel Gallery in the SoHo area of Manhattan, which deals in photorealism, and is also co-owner, with his wife, of the adjacent Susan P. Meisell Gallery of Decorative Arts.

"When we start collecting," Mr. Meisel said, "our objective is to build the best collection in the world, to know more about it than anybody else, and then publish. Basically, trees is the only collection I've had that I don't deal in. I can never catch up to the great genius collectors such as Ossorio."50,000-Pound Copper Beech

Without a blade of grass anywhere, he started to tour the nurseries for landscaping ideas. Like Mr. Lustbader, he fell in love with the selection at Marder's. "One thing led to another, and before we knew it we were collecting trees. The specialty at the moment is beeches."

"I love big trees," Mr. Meisel said. He wasted no time acquiring them. He bought a 50,000-pound copper beech, a billowing weeping European green beech that resembles an Afghan and a towering 40-feet fastigiate, or cone-shape, beech that he planted next to a globe-shaped fern-leaf beech.

Mr. Meisel calls that his trylon and perisphere. "These really turn me on," he said.

Mr. Meisel marvels how the large beeches have never been damaged by hurricanes.First-Generation Purple Fountains

The pride of his collection are 15 weeping European purple beeches, or "purple fountains," a species introduced in the United States four years ago. "The mythology on this," he said, "is that they were developed by some guy in Belgium and then slipped into California via Vancouver."

His first three are now 18 feet tall. "They'll always be the tallest purple fountains in the United States," Mr. Meisel said. "First generation."

He dealer is also cultivating saplings of 25 kinds of beeches. They are planted in a long alley next to a two-acre sculpture garden. "As the saplings get bigger," Mr. Meisel said, "I'll transplant them around my sculpture field," which he hopes to expand and open to the public some day. Included are eight large works by artists like Audrey Flack and Arman, whom he represents, as well pieces from his private collection.

A vigorous man who turns 50 this month, Mr. Meisel does all his own pruning. "I climb the tall trees," he said. "Every clip is thought about."

Casting his eyes over his eight acres, he said: "Some art collectors stop when their walls are filled. And there are people who collect trees until their landscaping is done. A real collector has a warehouse. I have a warehouse here. I can buy every tree I want. I'll keep going."From Roundhouse to Longhouse

Jack Lenor Larsen, the textile designer, says wants to leave a legacy. Three years ago Mr. Larsen sold his African-style Roundhouse, with its legendary landscape setting and fine specimen trees.

A year ago Mr. Larsen moved to the adjacent 16 acres and his new Longhouse. Filled with treasures that the designer has collected over 35 years, the house has been widely photographed and last summer was the site of a large benefit for the American Craft Museum in Manhattan. This summer Mr. Larsen established the Longhouse as a foundation and said the bulk of his estate would be used to endow it. The Longhouse is slowly being converted to a public art center and botanical garden.

Mr. Larsen is now starting on the gardens. "This will be my second tree collection," said Mr. Larsen, who turns 65 this month. "This is much more fun than building a house, having to think about climate control and all."Conifers, Maples and Bamboos

Although the plants are for the most part young, the Longhouse already has a large collection of conifers, Japanese maples and bamboos, as well as a double alley of cryptomeria; a heather-and-heath garden, which Mr. Larsen's mother planted; a dune garden, and a few zany specimen evergreens like a prize 80-foot-wide weeping blue Atlas cedar. "It looks like a waterfall," the designer said.

But for the most part the planning and the planting is a big project yet to come. "I'm much more interested in the broad sweep of things now," Mr. Larsen said. The evolving plans include a large pinetum and an arboretum with special trees from all over the country and the world. Tags will identify the plants and give their mature heights.

"That's how I learned, being in an arboretum." He hopes the arboretum will be completed in five years.

The designer is receiving advice from experts like Robert Zion, an old friend who is the designer of the Museum of Modern Art Sculpture Garden and Paley Park in Manhattan. Satisfaction of Gardening

Mr. Larsen works full-time in his garden when he is in East Hampton. He even washes the birches with bleach and hoses them down to get rid of mildew. "Those of us who are professionals don't know at the end of a day or a week exactly what we've accomplished," he said. "But in the garden you at least have a big brush pile or a clearing. It's immediate satisfaction."

If Mr. Larsen is overwhelmed by the work to be done, he does not let on. "People who are into formal gardens," he said, "think a garden is a parterre with brick walks and so on. They don't think a half-wild landscape is a garden at all. But I do!"Goal of Living Sculptures

"The Creeks is the inspiration for my landscaping," Mr. Lustbader said. "When Charlie took me there for the first time four years ago, I totally flipped out. I realized that the environment around the house had to be nurtured." They bulldozed and recontoured almost everything on Mr. Lustbader's acre.

Mr. Lustbader said his aim was to create living sculptures, something he can work on endlessly.

"We've taken young plants, planted them close together," he said. "Sometimes the juxtapositioning speaks for itself. Sometimes we intertwine the branches."

In the intricately embroidered gardens are a red and two green baby beeches planted together that give the impression of a graft; a formal yet witty lineup of five groupings of whimsically shaped dwarf evergreens that Mr. Lustbader calls his "cartoon strip"; a kagiri nishiki, pink curly maple with a brocade leaf nestled next to a deep red rohani beech with curly edges.

"Sometimes we set off a particular grouping on a separate base, like an assemblage," Mr. Lustbader said. A main sculpture includes a weeping blue Atlas cedar, a gold Atlas cedar and a varied-directional larch.

Another sculpture includes two prize Japanese red maples, a spiny atrolineare and a stubby shishishagira, that intertwine with the "bluest of spruces," a weeping Hoopsi blue.To Attract Druids

The property is divided into six areas on six levels with their own sitting areas. "My wife and I wanted different places where we could sit and reflect," he said. Mr. Lustbader's wife is his editor.

Near the entranceway on the road is a dell that is planted with rare dwarf maples and beeches, an area that Mr. Lustbader wanted as a sanctuary. There is also a formal sunken garden with delicate dwarf conifer specimens, including a graft of two types of spruce, a gift from Edward F. (Ted) Dragon, Mr. Ossorio's longtime companion.

The sacred area, the highest point on the land, is "where you'd come to pray if you were a Druid," Mr. Lustbader said. An owl garden inspired by one at the Creeks is another area, as is the Japanese garden and Mrs. Lustbader's perennial garden. Each plant has a metallic identification tag with its botanical name.Training and Pruning of Baby Trees

Perhaps the most serene setting is the sitting area overlooking the sunken garden. Near the bench is a boulevard false cypress planted with a green Seiryu Japanese maple. A branch is gracefully bent down, Japanese fashion, by a rock tied at the end of a wire. "It took me three days to find that rock," Mr. Lustbader said.

He performs all his own pruning and said if he ever ran out of space he would never run out of baby trees to train, prune and watch intergrow.

Many nurserymen in the Hamptons say the heyday of the heavy-hitter millionaire tree collector is over. "People aren't collecting trees as much for their tree collection as they are building up their garden," Charlie Marder said.

The president of the Whitmore Worsley Nursery in Amagansett, Jack Whitmore, said: "The focus is on landscaping. Now everything has to look great. We sell large specimen trees, but the customers almost just order them and say put them in. They don't come over and fawn over the rare specimens the way Warner LeRoy and Ben Heller used to."

Everything has toned down, Mr. Seeler said, adding: Seeler. "I have three collectors that are quite interested in rare plants this year. They're leverage-buyout guys, and they really don't want anyone to know they're doing anything." Mr. Seeler also said he was selling smaller specimens, plants that cost $4,000 instead of $9,000 to $15,000, because "It's a little gauche now to spend a lot of money."