Landscaping in Hampton Bays, NY

On sandy ground, how we water matters as much as when. Suffolk County's Healthy Lawns guidance says sandy soils drain quickly, so smaller, more frequent waterings work better than one long soak, and that lawns need about 1 inch or more of water a week, depending on the grass, the soil and the weather. On district water we split each lawn zone into short cycles inside the district's evening start window, put shrub beds on drip lines instead of spray heads, and add a rain sensor so a storm cancels the cycle. New York's Sanitary Code, section 5-1.31, requires backflow containment on many properties, so every irrigation connection we build carries a backflow preventer. Our irrigation systems are programmed to whichever supplier serves the property, the district or the Suffolk County Water Authority.

Sears Bellows County Park, with its freshwater Bellows Pond, lies in what Suffolk County Parks calls the Long Island Pine Barrens. NRCS describes two common Long Island sands, the Plymouth and Carver series, as very deep, excessively drained and acid, and the Carver series as mostly forested to scrub oak, pitch pine and eastern white pine. Where a Hampton Bays lot has that kind of sand, we plant from the Central Pine Barrens Commission's native list and Long Island's native grasses: pitch pine and bearberry, both rated A by Rutgers for deer, bayberry, also A, inkberry, rated B, and little bluestem and switchgrass, both A. The Peconic Estuary Partnership notes that native plants do not require fertilizers, and our native, deer-resistant plantings are drawn from these lists.

The Town's aquifer rules may reach your lot. In the Aquifer Protection Overlay District, which the Town maps over land outside the incorporated villages, natural vegetation must be preserved to the maximum extent possible, and clearing on a residential lot is capped by size: 60 percent of the site on 15,001 to 30,000 square feet, 50 percent on 30,001 to 60,000, 35 percent on 60,001 to 90,000, and so on down to 15 percent above 200,000 (section 330-67A(4)(a)). A building permit application there needs a survey showing the existing natural vegetation and the areas to be disturbed, the clearing limit is staked and ribboned on site, and over-clearing brings a stop-work order until the ground is revegetated with low-maintenance, nonfertilizer species (section 330-69C). We keep our planting plans inside that staked line.

Leaf blowers follow Town Code section 235-2B. Gas-powered machines are barred from May 20 through September 20, and the rest of the year they keep weekday hours of 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and Saturday hours of 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. A lot must exceed 1/2 acre before a walk-behind gas blower, or more than two handheld or backpack gas units at a time, may work on it, so a fall cleanup is sized to the lot. Cleanups double as tick work. Suffolk County's Department of Health Services says the blacklegged tick transmits Lyme disease, anaplasmosis and babesiosis and that ticks can be active year-round, even in winter; it advises mowed lawns, trimmed shrubs and cleared leaf litter, and the CDC suggests a 3-foot-wide barrier of wood chips or gravel where lawn meets woods.

For lawns, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County names tall fescue and fine fescue as the most maintenance-free grasses for Long Island; fine fescue does well on only 1 pound of actual nitrogen per 1,000 square feet each year and is extremely drought tolerant, and tall fescue's deep, massive root system gives it extra drought tolerance. Suffolk County's Chapter 459 bars fertilizer from November 1 to April 1. The USDA's 2023 map places the 11946 ZIP code in zone 7a, and NOAA's 1991-2020 normals for the two Town-area stations put the last spring freeze between April 23 at Bridgehampton and May 7 at Westhampton Gabreski Airport, so tender annuals wait until May. Our lawn care calendar feeds only inside the County's dates.

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