Ulla Johnson and Zach Miner can’t stop talking about their yard. “It’s a spring bounty every weekend with new points in bloom,” says the type designer. Her verbant setting, after 4 years of labor with panorama guru Miranda Brooks, are lastly coming into their very personal. Bulbs planted last fall are pushing up by the soil. Magnolia bushes are blossoming. A flash of pink—the petals of a flowering cherry tree—is seen merely open air the lounge window.
The couple have relied the tactic. “A yard takes time to turn into itself,” explains Johnson. “Points switch spherical and uncover their dwelling. Belongings you plant come once more in a barely utterly completely different place. It’s such a stupendous evolution.”
The similar might probably be talked about of their dwelling out east, constructed circa 2010 by MB Construction, the place they retreat on weekends with their three children. Identical to the yard, it’s a bit utterly completely different on every go to: The modular basic Mario Bellini sofa may keep in a leftover configuration from last night time time’s banquet; a stray piece of driftwood—certainly one of many family’s many collections—may end up in anyone’s mattress room, because of their vizsla, Daphne; a model new ceramic piece may arrive in a subject, shipped dwelling from a present journey to Spain.
“It’s all about this idea of layering,” says Johnson, whose elevated bohemian vogue mannequin follows a equally eclectic feeling. “Over a lifetime the house will proceed to evolve.”
Johnson and her husband, a information with an paintings background, had been spending weekends in Montauk, the windy, low-key hamlet on the easternmost tip of Prolonged Island, for a number of decade sooner than they began to seek for their very personal place. This dwelling, as Miner locations it, “checked a complete lot of very fascinating bins—it was unusual, trendy, and had character.” As Johnson says, “Its spirit spoke to us.” After they glimpsed the current inexperienced roof up prime, that they had been purchased.
For about 5 years, they’ve steadily renovated and furnished the place in phases, with the help of construction company Studio Zung and inside designer Alexis Brown, always cautious to keep up it livable as they work—notably inside the summers as soon as they carve out time to surf, swim, hike, and entertain.
To extra entry the vistas previous (the house, which sits on prime of a hill, presents views of every the ocean and the bay), they added further dwelling home windows. Within the summertime, they’re principally left open so that, as Miner says, “you could primarily keep open air.” To warmth points up, they ripped up manufactured bamboo flooring and adjusted them with secure Dinesen ash and refinished many partitions with hand-applied plaster. They reworked the staircase in ash and powder-coated metallic, and streamlined just some areas, notably the kitchen, to create a further casual, entertaining-friendly flooring plan. Some elements—identical to the fossil-stone counters inside the bathroom—they left merely as that they had been. After which there was the panorama, whereby Brooks launched bushes, a peony path, and a slicing yard. “We planted it very informally, so that points actually really feel pretty wild and free,” says Johnson, a flower lover who finds numerous inspiration for her collections inside the yard.
