Breck and Georgia Eisner are based in Los Angeles, but they have always loved visiting their friends in the Hamptons. It was during the pandemic that Georgia asked one of these friends, the designer David Netto, to keep an eye out for a place they could buy. Nothing fancy: “We just wanted something low-key and where our kids could walk and bike,” Georgia says. “The other requirement I had was not one single blade of grass to mow!” says Breck.
Netto called them back the very next day wondering if they’d be interested in a pair of cottages designed by Alfred Scheffer, known for his mid-century Cape Cods out East, which were discreet interventions within the dune landscape. Only a handful are left. The Eisners bought the 1949 property without even having visited it in person.
There was the 1,200-square-foot main house, a garage, and “what was the grandmother’s bedroom as a separate structure,” says Breck, all built around a decked courtyard. “The main house is where the kids stay, and the garage is now the one place where people can watch TV and play ping-pong” and, Georgia adds, “do laundry.” Grandma’s cottage became the primary bedroom. “The whole idea is indoor-outdoor -living,” Breck says. “By having these three structures, you are forced to go outside.”
Breck was intrigued by early photographs of the property and showed them to landscape architect Ahmad Sardar-Afkhami, to whom Netto had introduced them. “Breck was very clear that he wanted to preserve the land going back to those images of the dunes,” Sardar-Afkhami says.
This meant sand ground cover around the courtyard and wooden boardwalks that can be rolled up and stored off-season. Sardar-Afkhami was able to save mature pitch pines, a Japanese maple tree, and a hefty wisteria plant. He planted a large willow tree to provide shade for the outdoor dining area. He also salvaged wild grapes while planting an array of meadow flowers that would attract bees and butterflies.
Sardar-Afkhami and his family lived in Iran until 1978; there, his grandparents had a 19th-century walled garden in Tehran; he learned about ancient Persian gardens that relied on water brought down from the mountains in underground canals. His grandmother taught him pretty much everything he knew about horticulture until he went to the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s landscape program. “When I told my grandmother,” Sardar-Afkhami says, “she said, ‘Who goes to Harvard to be a gardener?’ ” He went on to get a master’s degree in architecture from Columbia and worked for Robert A.M. Stern Architects before starting Sardar Design Studio in 2007. His practice has included designing gardens in Jordan, France, Washington, D.C., and San Antonio, but since moving to Southold on the North Fork in 2020, he has become immersed in the world of native species.
“You know when you load up the truck with native plants,” Sardar-Afkhami says, “and you drive to your site, like not even five minutes after the plants are in the ground, the butterflies are back! It’s almost like they have followed the truck.
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