Most of the time, something that needs to be done in the garden speaks louder than an invitation to relax. Who can sit still in the face of weeds or wilt?
But well-chosen, carefully placed outdoor seating is an effective design tool that can seductively attract visitors (if not always the work-crazy gardener). And for anyone who answers its call, seating offers even more: it offers an alternative view to the one you get when exploring a room on foot.
Take a seat and take a different look around.
That’s one of many creative strategies at work in Madoo, the garden in Sagaponack, Long Island, started in 1967 by poet, painter and aspiring plant breeder Bob Dash.
Mr. Dash’s first foray into garden design was with a lawnmower, said Alejandro Saralegui, who began working with him about four years before his death in 2013 at age 82. Mr. Saralegui is executive director of the nonprofit Madoo Conservancy, which oversees and opens the property for tours and special events.
“Bob would just mow paths through the meadows, set up a bench and just read his book and probably have a drink,” said Mr. Saralegui, who co-wrote a new book with Kendell Cronstrom, “Madoo: The Making of an American Garden.”
“Madoo has a lot of winding paths,” he added, “and that’s how they came about because he was literally just pushing a mower. And then he did it again the next week or two, and you ended up in a different place with a different view.”
Like other horticulturists with a keen sense, Mr. Dash has expanded the power of sitting even further by also incorporating the indoor-outdoor perspective. He placed impressive views of the outdoor garden on an axis radiating from inviting indoor seating.
The dining table in the Madoo summer house – one of two converted barns on the property – is positioned to enjoy the view the farm next door. As captured in one of Mr. Dash’s paintings, this view extended further to a grove of magnolias that he was planting as saplings grew within it.
In the “brothel red” living room (Mr. Dash’s words), a vintage Bentwood double rocker looks out onto a particularly low window onto the Secret Garden. In a library area there is also a view of these plantings with their “very exotic look,” Mr Saralegui said – including Australian tree ferns and a dark-leaved hydrangea. There, a paint-spattered wooden stool paired with a vintage drafting table sits in front of the window overlooking everything, framed by moldings that match the living room walls.
The power of color
Color – including on many outdoor seating elements – “is crucial to Madoo and Madoo’s identity,” Mr. Saralegui said. The canvases that Mr. Dash created in his studio were in muted tones, and the external architectural palette was initially traditionally restrained in brown and white.
But then he began to enliven it with color, creating visual connections to the evolving garden – and not just to door and window trim.
“He painted a gate to contrast or complement a flower next to it,” Mr. Saralegui said. “And then maybe a little finale, and then it kind of spoke to him and he really went overboard with it — but not in a bad way.”
Adjectives like “crazy” and “magical” are often uttered by appreciative voices.
Mr Saralegui vividly remembers the familiar early morning image of a pensive Mr Dash sitting on a yellow Lloyd Loom stool on the small bridge over Madoo’s Asian Pond Garden. His stainless steel coffee cup sat on a blue and yellow table.
Elsewhere there are further calls for pause: an imaginative purple pavilion houses a hexagonal table and stools. A bright sky blue rolling bench screams out from a patch of lawn. A pair of Adirondack chairs designed by Mr. Dash, painted yellow with pale pink arms, draw our attention and introduce us to a scene we would otherwise miss. “The slope is very steep and you get a completely different view of the garden,” Mr Saralegui said, adding that Madoo was “not a place with great views”. But this is surprisingly true. “And so you sit back and look up,” he said, and the view becomes larger than if you explored the area on foot.
Such carefully considered invitations to rest “create these little moments in the garden,” Mr. Saralegui said, calling them “mini-follies.”
Each is in one of about 20 rooms that make up the landscape, which Mr. Saralegui describes not as a garden room but as Madoo’s “experience area.” The variety of visual elements contributes to the feeling of space.
“Nobody ever believes me when I tell them it’s 1.91 hectares,” Mr Saralegui said. “They always think it’s much, much bigger because there are all these little mini-crazes and these little windy paths that you get a little lost in, like you’re in a much bigger garden. But that’s not the case.”
The front half of the garden is romantic, he said, the back half is structured. Some of the experiences guide your journey with defining directional elements, such as: B. clipped boxwood and yew hedges flanking gravel paths, including those inlaid with circular paving stones cut from telephone poles.
Perhaps no feature is more impressive than the stream, a narrow water channel flanked by formal brick pavers, as one would expect in a traditional English garden.
Think beyond the terrace
Mr. Dash made it clear that the garden cannot be “preserved in amber,” Mr. Saralegui said, so it is constantly evolving, including some seating. A long-standing pair of 19th-century French metal beltwork workbenches features a new gray and red color scheme. They stand face to face and invite small groups to talk.
A recently added Nara bench by French architect Louis Benech stands in a private little spot among hornbeam and boxwood bushes, but offers expansive views directly onto the neighboring farm. “You’re looking at one of the last great views of Sagaponack,” Mr. Saralegui said.
He has some suggestions for “what goes where” when it comes to outdoor seating. Above all, don’t limit it to obvious places. “It doesn’t have to be right in your face,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be on the terrace.”
Next, maybe leave out the pillows. “You can find a very comfortable dining chair that doesn’t have a cushion, so you don’t have to run in every time it rains,” he said. “And it doesn’t matter if the bird poops on it.”
He also advises against high-pressure cleaning wooden furniture. “People do this all the time and it makes it hard and uncomfortable,” he said. “Why do you want to get rid of the patina?”
Madoo welcomes nearly 4,000 visitors each year, free of charge, on open days – weekend afternoons in the spring and fall and Thursday to Sunday afternoons in the summer. Apparently there were no complaints about the approach to garden seating, however slightly eccentric (and unupholstered) it may be.
Especially in warmer weather, the diverse places to linger and look will serve their purpose.
“Give them a little shade, give them something to look at, another way to look at the garden and you will see people sitting there,” Mr Saralegui said.
Margaret Roach is the creator of the website and podcast A Way to Garden, as well as a book of the same name.