Artist Ugo Rondinone and Designer Dennis Schrader Create a Meditative Landscape Where Bold Sculptures Mingle With Moss

In his Long Island garden, Swiss-born artist Ugo Rondinone, in collaboration with landscape designer Dennis Schrader of Landcraft Design Associates, has meticulously cultivated a verdant, meditative landscape, transforming a challenging coastal bluff with sandy soil into a thriving moss garden. This ambitious project, which began during the 2020 COVID lockdown, aimed to establish moss as the garden's central feature, offering a lush, tranquil ground cover year-round despite initial setbacks and the inherent patience required for moss cultivation. The artist's previous home on the North Fork of Long Island was featured in Architectural Digest in December 2018. The garden, a harmonious convergence of nature and culture, is loosely structured into four distinct sections. The entry to the home, situated on a bluff overlooking the Long Island Sound, is adorned with a diverse collection of maidenhair, ostrich, Christmas, and New York ferns. A capacious pond forms the focal point of another section, surrounded by twenty-one varieties of Japanese maple, a species specifically chosen for its suitability to the North Fork's climate. A third area is characterized by closely spaced river birch trees that create a natural canopy, fostering an ideal environment for shade-loving moss. The final segment of the garden features cherry trees and ginkgoes, encircling a 16-foot-tall columnar concrete fountain. This fountain, known as the Mattituck Waterfall, is covered in native plants, presenting itself as a living sculpture. Beyond its botanical artistry, the garden also integrates three large-scale art installations. Adjacent to the koi-stocked pond, Rondinone re-created an earlier sculpture, _Jahrestage_ (2004), by wrapping a sick, 100-foot-tall red oak entirely in silver rubber tape. This installation is accompanied by a massive wind chime, featuring six metal pipes that emit mellifluous tones, reminiscent of cathedral bells and Tibetan singing bowls, as described by the artist. In front of his garden studio, Rondinone erected three monumental cloud sculptures. These sculptures, fabricated from concrete, pebbles, and sand, replicate the gnarled, perforated forms of Chinese scholar's rocks from his personal collection, scaled to approximately 12 feet in height. The unifying element across these diverse garden zones is moss, an ancient plant symbolizing nature's resilience and fragility, its gradual rhythms, and the aesthetic appeal of simplicity. Rondinone implemented practical techniques, such as installing horizontally arranged fern barriers to prevent moss runoff on the slope and utilizing drip irrigation for efficient water delivery, minimizing waste. He emphasizes that while establishing a moss garden requires time and dedication, it subsequently becomes famously low-maintenance. The artist expresses his enjoyment of the garden's multi-seasonal appeal, noting that moss thrives in fall and winter, providing a vibrant contrast to the dormancy of other plants. Rondinone's future plans include acquiring an adjacent five-acre property to expand the garden, install additional sculptures, and renovate two existing farmhouses to establish a summer residency for artists and poets, under a foundation he is currently developing. #GardenDesign #LandscapeArchitecture #MossGarden #SculptureInstallation #ArtistGarden #UgoRondinone #DennisSchrader #LongIslandGarden #ArchitecturalDigest #GardenDesign #LandscapeArchitecture #MossGarden #SculptureInstallation #ArtistGarden #UgoRondinone #DennisSchrader #LongIslandGarden #ArchitecturalDigest

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