From the Edwards family farm on Fireplace Road in Springs, where Charles Marder’s mother was born, you could see far out over the flat landscape of fields, pasture and the salt marsh surrounding the tidal waters of Accabonac Harbor. Nature was generous to the early settlers of this area: horses and cows grazed, feeding on salt marsh hay while the harbor itself was thick with clams and mussels and opened into the rich fishing grounds of Gardiner’s Bay and Napeague Bay. Five miles to the south lay East Hampton Village, and a mile or so north the landing where fires were built to signal Gardiner’s Island to send the boat over. Fireplace Road was then a bucolic street dotted with the shingle houses of farmers and fishermen
By the time Charles Marder grew up there fewer horses and cows roamed the wetlands and fewer baymen filled their bushels with shellfish, but the farms remained and the area still felt semi-rural and overall not that much changed from what it was like in previous generations.
By the time Charlie’s four sons grew up there it was more or less what we see today: a quiet corner of the Hamptons with simple beauty thanks to the well-preserved shores of Accabonac Harbor, with older, graceful shingle houses along Fireplace road, for the most part untouched by the vast size and the intricate styles of houses constructed in other parts of the East End that developed later.
(One of those modest fisherman’s houses—spartan by today’s standards—later became known to us as the home of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, now a National Historic Landmark. The small barn on the property was moved somewhat to the north, becoming the iconic studio in which Pollock and later Krasner created many of their most famous works, and opening the house to eastern view and light that so influenced both of them. It is clearly a site of great natural beauty, but Pollock claimed to have chosen it because “I wanted to get out of the city.”)
Trees appear to be a sort of touchstone, there at the important moments of Charlie Marder’s life. As a young man he cut firewood in the wooded parts of Springs near his home. When he and wife Kathleen started the business nearly thirty-five years ago (working from the basement of his mother’s home) it consisted of mainly firewood and small yard projects until they established themselves in landscaping. An important break in getting the early business moving came when the artists and art collector Alfonso Ossorio and his companion Ted Dragon hired Charlie to help landscape and maintain the extensive evergreen collection on the grounds of The Creeks, their 57 acre property on the shores of Georgica Pond, now owned by Ronald Perelman. This was more than a nice collection of trees. Millions of dollars had gone into creating an arboretum that the American Conifer Society designated “the eighth wonder of the horticultural world.” (Inside the house hung important Pollocks and other abstract expressionist artists.) Charlie and Kathleen credit this experience with helping to shape their aesthetic views on art and design, leading to unusual colors and planting combinations.
Then, not just trees but huge trees signaled the next stage of Charlie Marder’s career path. He was one of the first people in the country to start working with a truck-mounted, large-scale mechanical tree spade. It’s a common sight now, but it was really quite remarkable when we all first saw enormous trees with massive root balls moving merrily along the Montauk Highway. It was new and striking, it was a breakthrough in technology, and it was the right moment to secure the reputation of Marders in the minds of Hamptons residents.
Not surprisingly, as the business grew, next came a move from the house in Springs to three acres on the Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton, and the beginning of a retail garden shop under Kathleen’s direction. Increasingly Marders came to be recognized for the uncommon and sometimes unprecedented plant material they supplied. But Charlie wanted to have something beyond a highway garden center. In 1999 Marders moved to an eighteen acre site on Snake Hollow Road, between the Bridgehampton Commons shopping center and the grounds of the Hampton Classic. The nature of the business changed as well, from a conventional highway garden operation to a full fledged horticultural center.
Since that move the property size has increased to thirty-three acres. With an extensive fleet of trucks and equipment and the staff required to run it all, Marders has become one of the largest businesses in the Hamptons and almost certainly the largest retail nursery on Long Island. While landscaping is at the heart, the business, like a healthy tree that has planted deep roots, the business has expanded and spread, growing in many directions.
The garden shop now carries everything from antiques to books to shoes to driftwood furniture to boulders. And its holiday shop hosts one of the most talked about Christmas displays in the Hamptons as well as a part-time café. Through most of the year Marders hosts a program of Sunday lectures that touch on every aspect of the garden. A sampling of some of the free lectures coming up shows how varied they can be: roses, low-maintenance wildlife and native plants, moles versus voles, birds of prey. Through the summer on Friday nights the Silas Marder Gallery screens “Films on the Haywall.” Bring your own blanket, beach chairs and picnic. Then a series of classes in the fall deals with make-your-own activities such as wreaths and arrangements.
Silas, the eldest of the sons, works in the business with his parents and in 2004 also installed the Silas Marder Gallery in an unused barn on the property. He intentionally kept the building looking like an unused barn except for the art and furniture, and nothing like the sleek white-walled art galleries we are used to. “I wanted people to feel relaxed when they got into the gallery.” Outdoors, in a graceful country setting on the grounds of the nursery, is the sculpture garden. With only two careers to keep him busy he took up garden furniture design and now sells a line of high-style teak chairs, tables and benches. The teak is plantation grown in Costa Rica, and the design plays with scale—“stretched scaling” he calls it—surprising and delighting the eye.
One son, Michael, an arborist, operates the tree maintenance and care portion of Marders. Another son, Mica, is an artist. A fourth brother, Dashiel Marder, a highly skilled 30 year-old free-diving spear fisherman, was lost while diving in a remote spot off the coast of Indonesia in April 2013.
Charles and Kathleen Marder still live on Fireplace Road. Though they have helped to create some of the most spectacular gardens in the Hamptons, they remain connected to the old Edwards family homestead and way of life in that pocket of Springs.