16
Gorgeous greenery and bright, bold flowers can be stunning and sustainable—just ask Unlimited Earth Care founder Frederico Azevedo, who has beautified the East End with artful landscape design for 30-plus years. Here, Azevedo explains what’s blooming these days, literally and figuratively.
What’s new with you and Unlimited Earth Care?
It’s an exciting year for Unlimited Earth Care! The Garden Market is in full bloom, with new collections of outdoor furniture and full selections of native and well-adapted plants and flowers. On June 28th, we hosted an art opening, “Flourish & Flow,” a new series by the artist LUAP [Paul Robinson] featuring his iconic “The Pink Bear” figure in natural landscapes. With original paintings and limited-edition prints by the artist, it was a chance to experience art amongst the flowers on a summer evening. I’m looking forward to hosting an art opening at the Garden Market of a well-known artist whose work I’ve loved and collected for years. I’ve always been interested in the arts and I’m a designer, so it’s a wonderful opportunity to have two worlds I love together—flowers and fine art.
Unlimited Earth Care
What else are you excited about this summer?
Summer is my busiest season, so I’m excited to move forward with new projects and maintain previous designs. The summer is the true test of a successful garden and landscape design, so I have to be attentive to how everything is blooming and growing together, and how the design responds to the transition to the new season.
Color is a signature of your design approach. What sorts of palettes and plants inspire you currently?
Yes, I’m particularly known for my colorful, curving floral borders, which bring depth and a richness to lawns or paths and help me carve out different spaces. I compose both softer and more dramatic color palettes depending on the project—lavender or nepeta can provide a good contrast both in texture and hue to a vibrant buddleia; and bright white blooms, such as Shasta daisies or Casablanca lilies, can give graphic balance to golden rudbeckias or lively echinacea in pink and almost neon purples.
Unlimited Earth Care
Any other types of floral combos you’re loving right now?
Blanket flowers are a native perennial that bloom in July and the late summer, attract butterflies and hummingbirds, and come in some gorgeous colors. I also often use alliums in my designs; they bring form and height into a flower bed and will still be blooming through early summer. One combination I often use is Miscanthus grasses, pink fairy roses, and nepeta. They’re a great example of a companion plant garden: The Miscanthus provide the roses with shade, and the nepeta flowers attract insects that eat the aphids that bother the roses. Not only do they help care for each other, these three plants look nice together; the nepeta and roses look like something out of a traditional English garden, but the dramatic grasses make the whole composition feel modern.
How has sustainable gardening been part of Unlimited Earth Care’s ethos since you launched?
Unlimited Earth Care was founded in 1993 as a sustainable garden and landscape design firm. I’ve always designed with native and well-adapted plants and flowers, and I’ve always been attentive to new technologies or materials that can help make my designs more sustainable. Over the years, I’ve encouraged my clients to attract pollinators to their gardens, such as bees, birds, and butterflies, and I’m delighted that recently pollinator gardens have become fashionable, but Unlimited Earth Care has been designing to invite helpful visitors all along. We also offer sustainable design elements, like a choice of flowering meadows for large areas of property that may be setback or less used instead of lawns that require constant irrigation.
What kinds of plants are—and aren’t—particularly sustainable choices for gardening in the Hamptons?
The answer is complicated because the East End has so many diverse environments—some areas have sandy ocean soil just down the street from farmland or woods—so I encourage people to learn exactly what type of environment they’re considering and work from there. Generally, the best choices are plants that are native to Long Island, such as rudbeckia, asters, lupine, echinacea, bayberry, and helenium, but plants and flowers that are native to North America are also good choices, such as vervain, switchgrass, and lupine. There are also many well-adapted plants and flowers to choose from that can also thrive if chosen carefully. I’d say the unsustainable choices are whatever is a struggle to keep healthy in your particular environment; some tropical plants, for example, may not be happy Out East, and if you’re concerned about water use, consider choices that are low maintenance and hardy for your garden, such as some sages and rosemary, even echinacea is quite drought-tolerant. The important thing is to invite pollinators to your garden, and choose plants and flowers that are going to be healthy and thrive there, and of course I believe it’s possible to create something beautiful within those guidelines.
What are your absolute favorite green spaces in New York City and beyond?
I love Central Park, I have an apartment nearby, and of course the botanical gardens. I also love to visit the incredible gardens where my daughter lives out in Los Angeles, such as the Huntington Gardens. And Flamengo Park in Rio de Janeiro is the public park that inspired my love for landscape design and led me to become a garden and landscape designer myself. It was once an aterro, a landfill, and [landscape designer] Lota de Macedo Soares had a vision to create a modern park that would bring something beautiful and accessible into people’s lives. She assembled a team of legendary designers, such as Roberto Burle Marx and Richard Kelly, and it became a thriving public space that was highly designed and intentional yet somehow still overflowing with natural beauty and life; it’s an exceptional example of Brazilian Modernism.
Where are you finding design inspiration lately?
People often assume that I’m inspired by paintings, and I do love paintings of nature and gardens, but I find that my most vivid inspirations for color palettes come from animation. This surprises people, but gardens and landscapes are moving, living designs, so I have to build color palettes that are flexible and can respond to different types of light. Everything in the garden should look beautiful in the wind or on a cloudy day, and not just still in the sunlight.
Where can we find you dining and shopping Out East?
I am committed to my favorite standbys, like Pierre’s, Sunset Beach, and Le Bilboquet, but I always try new restaurants and visit new stores—I’m excited about the grand opening of Blue&Cream in Sag Harbor, owned by my friend Jeff Goldstein
All images: Courtesy of Unlimited Earth Care
Read the issue here!
Subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook and Instagram to stay up to date on all the latest fashion news and juicy industry gossip.