Landscaping in Water Mill, NY

Wetland lines come first. Within 200 feet of a wetland, Town Code section 325-6A requires a Town wetlands permit for regulated work, and the Town's permit form lists clearing, grading, excavation, fill deposition and hardscape among the activities it covers. On a developed lot the Town's minimum buffer, where practicable, is 75 feet for turf and fertilizer and 100 feet for structures (section 325-9A). The Conservation Board decides most applications, and smaller items can go to the Chief Environmental Analyst as an administrative permit. Work on bay bottoms and beaches needs a separate permit from the Town Trustees, the board established in 1686 that stewards more than 25,000 acres of the Town's shores, marshes and bottomlands, and the Trustees require a ten-foot setback for fertilized vegetation behind a new bulkhead or retaining wall. Where a wetland is tidal, New York State's regulated adjacent area reaches up to 300 feet inland.

Feeding a lawn here runs under three overlapping rules. Suffolk County's fertilizer law, Chapter 459, bars fertilizer on turf from November 1 to April 1, and within 20 feet of regulated surface water unless a continuous natural vegetative buffer at least 10 feet wide separates the turf from the water (section 459-9). Among the items the Town can approve by administrative permit, fertilized planting stays no closer than 75 feet landward of the wetland boundary (section 325-7B(3)). And on a lot inside the Town's Aquifer Protection Overlay District, fertilized vegetation, which the Town defines to include planting that needs irrigation, may not exceed 15 percent of the lot (section 330-68). We draw the lawn to the tightest of the three and set our lawn feeding schedule between April 1 and November 1.

From May 20 through September 20 our crews clear terraces and beds in Water Mill with battery-electric and hand tools, because the Town bans gas-powered leaf blowers in its hamlets for that whole window. The rest of the year, Town Code section 235-2B allows gas blowers from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on weekdays and 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays, never on Sundays or federal holidays. On a property of 1/2 acre or less, no walk-behind gas blower may be used and no more than two handheld or backpack units may run at once, so a fall cleanup here is planned by acreage as well as by leaf drop. For build work, the Town's noise chapter exempts construction only from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on weekdays and 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on weekends.

The USDA's 2023 hardiness map places Water Mill's ZIP code, 11976, in zone 7b, an average annual extreme minimum of 5 to 10 degrees F, half a zone milder than the Village of Southampton, whose 11968 is 7a. For bigleaf hydrangea, a Cornell fact sheet says the flowers turn blue in acid soil and pink in alkaline soil, but Rutgers rates it C, occasionally severely damaged, so deer browse decides where it goes. Where a lot takes wind off the bay or the ocean, we choose from the plants Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County lists as tolerant of salt spray, among them bayberry, beach plum, inkberry and pitch pine. Between lawn and a wetland buffer we use native, deer-resistant plantings such as bayberry and little bluestem, both rated A, rarely damaged, by Rutgers.

Water Mill takes its name from a grist mill that the Water Mill Museum says was probably grinding by 1644, and the Corwith Windmill, moved to the Water Mill Commons, was given with the common ground in 1934 to the Water Mill Village Improvement Association. Around them, the Mecox Bay plan finds the bay's watershed 49 percent residential, 28 percent agricultural and 15 percent open space. Wherever the lot, a garden light is nonessential lighting under the Town's lighting article (section 330-341): no continuous burning between 10:00 p.m. and dawn, no lamp above 3000 kelvin, and, above 600 lumens, a fully shielded fixture aimed straight down.

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