A quiet street lined with high privet hedges excluding outsiders and enclosing those who belong is an often evoked and generally accurate representation of the Hamptons. It is hardly a new proposal however. The British have lived with and loved privet hedges for many centuries, since the dense green foliage first kept out prowling beasts and protected the well-mannered inhabitants. Ideas on what constitutes propriety have changed, and beasts may be more socially acceptable, but the image of hedges as an indicator of staying apart has somehow endured.
Privet has been with us here since Colonial times, really just a hardy, simple and useful plant that people refuse to leave free of meaning and bigger implications. When folks were not using it to show off their separateness, the artistic gardener types had fun shaping it into fearsome bears and other topiary creatures. And before the days of big pharmaceuticals, privet had some nifty medicinal uses, too intimate for this column to fully explain.
More recently, a subdivision developer in Southampton planted more than two miles of privet hedges in an attempt to convince buyers of twelve million dollar vacant lots that the brand new streets of a former farm field are really extensions of the nearby estate area. Privet blossoms are highly fragrant but rather plain to look at and usually taken for granted. Hampton Sun, a local company, had the inspired idea of capturing the charming and familiar scent of privet blooms rather than more exotic flowers for their skin care products. Privet now seems securely rooted both in our real estate and our lives in the Hamptons.