Best of Outdoor Living 2022

Meet the winners of our third annual landscape design competition. Plus: five top garden visionaries

- By Zoe Gowen

Lessons from the Land

Hornbeam and boxwood, wisteria and tulip trees: these are comfort food for the garden, says Hamptons-based plantsman Charlie Marder. The shady, all-day sanctuary (above) he designed with Historical Concepts’ Andrew B. Cogar is one of four winning landscapes chosen in our third annual design competition—and all are brimming with ways to let nature lead. From an agrarian haven in Connecticut to a discreet courtyard in Maine, step into this year’s garden greats.

Chicest Poolside Lounge

Vernacular outbuildings of centuries past inspire a divine summer scene, with ample spots to relax in the shade.

THESE HOMEOWNERS WANTED a destination where they could spend the whole day outside,” says architect Andrew B. Cogar of Historical Concepts of conjuring this low-profile pool house. Cogar and Charlie Marder, garden designer, horticulturist, and plant collection curator of Marders in the Hamptons, dreamed up “a sensible evolution,” says Cogar, for how this poolside compound came to be on the property of an 1840s Bridgehampton, New York, home. What if, they wondered, it began as a farm shed, repurposed as a single-car garage in the 1900s when automobiles emerged, and then morphed into a greenhouse? “It’s unexpected and that’s precisely what makes it feel just right,” says Cogar. Imagining new access to industrial materials in the 1930s, he used steel windows and doors to line the westward-facing walls. “Structurally, they allowed us to vault the pitch of the buildings higher and also make the view to the pool so clear that it’s like watching a movie,” he notes.