Bridge Gardens in Full Bloom!

May 15, 2024

2024 Season to showcase garden house, renovation plans, community engagement and educational programs

2024 Summer and Fall Season Offers Gardening Workshops and Tours, Art Classes, Members Music Nights, and our Annual Autumn Open House

SOUTHAMPTON, NY — The Peconic Land Trust is pleased to announce the Spring, Summer & Fall 2024 season at Bridge Gardens. The Trust’s public garden, located at 36 Mitchell Lane in Bridgehampton, NY, is open daily all year round, with free admission.

“While all the seasons at the garden have their beauty, summer and fall are when the gardens are in full bloom,” says Garden Director Rick Bogusch. “Now is a good time to plan your visit.” The gardens include a large, formal herb garden with four theme beds (culinary, medicinal, textile and dye, and ornamental), a rose garden, a demonstration vegetable garden, a water garden, perennial borders, specimen trees and shrubs, unusual hedges and 24 community garden plots, all situated within a five-acre, park-like setting.

A focus for this year is a new capital campaign for renovation of the garden house and pathways. The renovation will provide an important gathering space for the Trust and the Garden to explore issues surrounding land conservation, stewardship and sustainability, including solutions that promote healthy land, water and communities on Long Island.

The Peconic Land Trust is working with local architecture firm Oza Sabbeth Architects and builder RLW4 on plans that transform the house into a true community space, with ADA-compliant entrances and bathrooms, expanded meeting space for groups up to 60 people for educational programming, and a commercial kitchen for garden to table food demonstrations. While keeping the iconic metal roof of the garden house, the building will transform to feel as part of the garden. The design for the Bridge Gardens building was recognized this year by AIA Peconic in the unbuilt category at its design awards in April!

From the AIA Peconic: “The jury admired and appreciated the attention to the history of the cultural landscape. The adaptive reuse and transformation over time from a Potato Farm to a Residence now transformed into a proposed public, multi-purpose, community center with demonstration gardens and outdoor classroom that highlights and focuses the community on the history of Long Island’s working farms is a poignant form of architecture as a social art.”

The inner garden pathways are also part of the renovation plans. Landscape design firm Araiys Design has created a plan with ADA compliant pathways that will wind visitors from the parking area through the inner garden – connecting to the garden house and the herb garden. Additionally, a natural amphitheater that incorporates the gardens’ slope will be introduced for open air programs.

Throughout the 2024 season we will be showcasing the designs for the house and the gardens, while continuing the important community programming the gardens are known for: garden-related workshops, tours, family programming, and arts programs.

A complete listing of events at Bridge Gardens is available at www.peconiclandtrust.org or by emailing events@PeconicLandTrust.org.

Our 2024 partners for programming include Bridgehampton Association, Bridgehampton Child Care and Recreational Center, Sag Harbor Food Pantry, The Bridgehampton Library, SHINE, Children’s Museum of the East End (CMEE), Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County, Jackson Dodds, Greener Pastures Organics, Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons, Perfect Earth Project, RB Irrigation, Parrish Art Museum, and Summerhill Landscapes.

While admission is free, Bridge Gardens also offers memberships that provide a variety of benefits, including reduced or free admission to the educational, recreational, and cultural programs held throughout the year at the gardens. To learn more about supporting the Gardens, visit www.PeconicLandTrust.org/BridgeGardens.

About Bridge Gardens

A five-acre gem in the heart of Bridgehampton, Bridge Gardens is a unique public and demonstration garden with mysterious hedgerows, a wide variety of perennial and annual flowers, specimen trees and shrubs, and a formal themed herb garden featuring culinary, medicinal, ornamental, and textile/dye plants. Donated in 2008 by Jim Kilpatric and Harry Neyens, the Trust has maintained the characteristics of the gardens while introducing new elements and programs that tie it to the organization’s conservation mission, including a vegetable garden, Community Garden spaces, and sustainable gardening practices. Today, Bridge Gardens serves as a multi-purpose, multi-disciplinary outdoor classroom, demonstration garden, and community resource, under the direction of Garden Director Rick Bogusch. For more information, visit www.PeconicLandTrust.org/BridgeGardens.

About the Peconic Land Trust

On August 1, 2023, the Peconic Land Trust celebrated its 40th Anniversary. Founded in 1983, Peconic Land Trust conserves Long Island’s working farms, natural lands, and heritage. Since its inception, the nonprofit Trust has worked conscientiously with landowners, communities, municipalities, partner organizations, and donors, to conserve 14,000 acres of land on Long Island. The Trust’s professional staff carries out the necessary research and planning to identify and implement alternatives to outright development. While working to conserve the productive farms, watersheds, woodlands, and beachfront of Long Island, the Trust is also protecting the unique rural heritage and natural resources of the region. For more information about the Peconic Land Trust, visit www.PeconicLandTrust.org.