On July 4, 1996, Mark and Gina Capiello sat in rocking chairs on the deck of their house on Dune Road in Westhampton. The chairs were the only furniture they had. They drank a glass of wine and watched the fireworks. It was a magical evening.
The couple once thought they’d never sit in that spot again.
Five years earlier, during the Halloween storm of 1991, the Capiellos lost their small summer house and garden to the pounding waves. It was one of 200 homes destroyed by the storm.
Although the beach had been eroding along the ocean, their little 1950s cottage had been protected, or so they thought, by 250 feet of 20-foot-tall black pines and beautiful, deep pink roses. But after the storm, their half-acre property was barren, covered by a 5-foot layer of sand and debris. Every tree, every bush, every flower, all were gone. Not a single piece of vegetation survived.
The Capiellos began the long and arduous task of cleaning up and starting over. “We spent the next five years in rental houses while we picked up and piled debris,” Ms. Capiello said. They did not plan to rebuild their house, but “then a miracle happened.” The Army Corps of Engineers “fixed the beach.”
The Capiellos love the beach so much that they decided to build a new house—and create a new garden—on their property.
They began by planting beachgrass during the first fall and winter to help stabilize the sand. It was painstaking work—they planted thousands of grass plugs, one at a time. “It was,” said Mr. Capiello, “like planting your front lawn blade by blade.”
At the time, the Capiellos were living and working in the city and could work on their property only on the weekends. “It was good winter exercise,” Ms. Capiello said with a laugh. “Thank God we were younger then!”
The following spring, they began creating a windbreak of black pines, bayberry and autumn olive to protect what would become the new garden. They had more than 150 yards of compost dumped in a giant pile in the “front yard,” and “we took it a wheelbarrow full at a time,” Ms. Capiello said, putting it into the bottom of the holes they dug for the small trees and shrubs.
Sometimes, help arrived from unexpected quarters. One chilly fall day as they were digging away, preparing to plant 20 5-foot pines, “our friend Bruce Hubbard came by with a backhoe, pulled down our driveway and just smiled and starting digging holes,” she recalled. They planted the trees in a soft, natural pattern, close enough together to slow the force of the strong winds and trap some of the salt they carry.
Both the Capiellos had some gardening experience as kids. Ms. Capiello’s mother has always loved flowers, and the family home always had a beautiful garden, she said. When Gina was in seventh grade, the family moved to a house in Bronxville that had been owned by avid gardeners, and she has fond memories of cutting armloads of flowers to bring indoors.
Mr. Capiello learned gardening from his father. “From the time he was a child, his dad had him in the garden, planting trees, digging French drains, and working on their vegetable garden,” Ms. Capiello explained.
The Capiellos put all their gardening knowledge to work, and gained a lot more along the way. They were among the first to rebuild in what is now the Village of West Hampton Dunes.
“After a couple of years of work on our garden, we could see our trees and the curved driveway from the airplane window when we would return from our business travels abroad. It was a true oasis in the sand,” Ms. Capiello said.
The couple built raised beds and stone retaining walls, and added irrigation where they needed it. Slowly, the garden rose from the sand and took shape.
“We battled the strong winds, the salty air and the hungry deer,” Ms. Capiello said. “After 10 years of satisfying effort, our garden looks like it has always been here.”
Their “front lawn,” closest to Dune Road, is a mix of American beachgrass, beach pea, bayberry, black pines, rugosa roses, and ox-eye daisies—a favorite of Ms. Capiello. “In June,” she said, “it’s an explosion of pink and white.”
Close to the house, raised beds along the driveway are filled with perennials and shrubs. The beds are full of summer color. The perennial palette mixes reds, pinks and blues, freshened with white. The brightest red comes from the incendiary blossoms of Crocosmia Lucifer. A shrub rose, a fuchsia Meidiland variety, blooms all summer. Purply pinks are contributed by a summer phlox (Norah Leigh) and purple coneflower (
Echinacea purpurea
‘Magnus’).
On the cooler end of the spectrum are blue false indigo (
Baptisia australis
), with its pea-like flowers and rattling seed pods, and sea holly (Sapphire Blue), whose spiny-tipped steel blue flowers contribute their offbeat sculptural shapes. Bright whites come from Shasta daisies and intensely fragrant Casa Blanca lilies.
There are hostas, too, which Ms. Capiello says “are really just deer food.”
The shrubs add privacy screening along the property line, as well as color and structure. There are evergreens, including dwarf Scotch pine and a tough creeping juniper. A scattering of deciduous shrubs pumps up the color. A couple of spiraeas, the dwarf Little Princess and the golden-leaved Gold Mound both have raspberry pink flowers. A crape myrtle (Tonto) adds a pinkish red note in late summer. There are hydrangeas, too, and white-flowered viburnums, along with highbush blueberry and a crabapple tree.
At the end of the driveway, plants connect the garden to the house and invite further exploration. A climbing New Dawn rose scales a lattice screen on the front of the house, spilling over the railing of the upper deck in a cascade of pink blooms. A white clematis (Guernsey Cream) twines around a stair railing.
To avoid future flood damage, the house is raised, with storage and garage space underneath. In one of the little nooks is a gardener’s dream of a potting shed, a birthday present to Ms. Capiello from her husband. It holds a built-in potting bench and lots of shelving, with storage space for pots, tools, and other supplies.
The back of the house overlooks wetlands and Moriches Bay. The Capiellos have preserved their patch of wetland, not building a dock or keeping a boat there. As a result, according to Ms. Capiello, the wetlands grass has expanded from a small island to a large swath. Native mallows bloom along the edge of the wetlands all during June. Feeder fish attract egrets, and swans inhabit the area, too, providing year-round entertainment for the Capiellos and their guests.
The Capiellos have learned a great deal about the natural environment of the wetlands and beach, and they strive to nurture it on their property. They have embraced the native plants that have taken root on their own. “Nature has filled in a lot of the blank spots over the years,” Ms. Capiello said.
Two years ago, the Capiellos retired and moved to West Hampton Dunes full time. They joined the Barrier Beach Preservation Association, the West Hampton Dunes homeowners’ group whose mission is “to preserve and protect the beaches, bays, wetlands, and wildlife of West Hampton Dunes for the benefit of its citizens and visitors, and to promote respect for the coastal environment through public education and scientific research.”
The group takes its mission seriously. Each spring the members work with the state Department of Environmental Conservation and Cornell University’s Marine Cooperative Extension office to monitor horseshoe crabs on the beach during their mating season. With financial help from Southampton Town, they’ve developed an oyster and scallop farming program to replenish Moriches Bay, seeding the first sanctuary this spring with 20,000 shellfish. In August they have environmental programs for the children of residents. They work closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to protect endangered bird species, such as the piping plover, that are abundant on the barrier beach. This year they planted a demonstration garden of native plants with assistance from the Suffolk County Water Authority and Hampton Nursery.
These days, the Capiellos have more time to enjoy their garden, and to expand it.
“I have never seen a plant in a nursery that I didn’t like,” Ms. Capiello confessed. “Some women buy shoes—I buy plants!”
Some of those plants have thrived and some have died, but that is the nature of gardens. Ms. Capiello takes it all in stride. She is, she said, constantly moving plants around in the garden until she finds the spot where they grow well and look their best.
Their garden means a lot to Mark and Gina Capiello. It gives them privacy, which is important in the village, where the houses are close together.
“It’s fun to watch the garden grow, but after a raid by the deer we also know that it is a temporary joy that needs to be savored every day,” Ms. Capiello said.
The couple are grateful for having the time to enjoy their garden each day. Some days there’s even time for a glass of wine at sunset.
