Quick Takes With: Lisa Przystup
You may remember Lisa Przystup from our 2017 post on her rustic-meets-minimalist Catskills home (the one with that clever DIY brass backsplash) or our 2021 story on the updates made since then. Or perhaps you’ve heard of her because you read and loved her book on the chic homes of chic Upstaters. But even if her name doesn’t ring a bell, you’d definitely recall her gorgeous Christmas decorations that captured every design-minded professional’s attention last year (a hard thing to do these days).
That festive dreamscape that birthed a whole new palette for the holidays (blue and red? yes!) is featured in her newest book, Once Around the Sun (dropping Oct. 14), a visual diary of the 1893 farmhouse she shares with her husband, Jonathon, as it moves through the seasons. Inside its pages are beautiful images of the interiors as well as the land, water, and sky just outside its doors—all of it evolving as the months go by.
Of course, the garden is where the seasonal effects are felt most acutely. Below, Lisa shares her thoughts on cultivating the land, “the sort of miracle that never ever gets old.”
Photography by John Hesselbarth + Kate Foster, unless otherwise noted.
Your first garden memory:
Less a garden memory and more a plant-related memory: pulling the stamen through the base of honeysuckle blooms to drop the nectar onto my tongue. I remember feeling like I had discovered the most incredible secret.
Garden-related book you return to time and again:
Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit (a very good reminder on so many levels, in so many ways). The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing (I can’t technically say I return to this time and time again as I started reading it last year and have yet to finish it, but I can say that I’ve loved it so far and my inability to complete it has more to do with me than it has to do with the quality of writing or storytelling). And this wonderful essay, “Autumn, It’s No Garden Party,” by Michael Pollan.
Instagram account that inspires you:
@saipua: the OG, the G.O.A.T, all the superlatives. Her floral design is art of the highest order, her color palette game is next level.
Describe in three words your garden aesthetic.
Work in progress.
Plant that makes you swoon:
Oh, there are so many, for so many different reasons…. I’m obsessed with the size and grandeur of angelica and mullein, garden roses and gardenias for their heady scent, foxgloves and Turk’s-cap lilies because there’s just something about them isn’t there?
Plant that makes you want to run the other way:
Home Depot chrysanthemums.
Favorite go-to plant:
Honestly, I don’t think I have one! I really thought about this, I was sure that I did, but as it turns out, not so much. Maybe this is why I’m still trying to figure out the great puzzle of our flowerbeds…
Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:
Everything about gardening is the hardest lesson: the patience it asks for, the ability to keep trying despite failure year-over-year, the fact that the thing that does you in one year will be different from what does you in the next. Sometimes it’s too much rain, sometimes it’s too little, sometimes it’s the slugs, sometimes it’s the beetles, too much sun, too little—the list goes on and on.
Unpopular gardening opinion:
Sometimes it’s just not worth it.
Gardening or design trend that needs to go:
This is something I’ve only noticed in certain places, but there seems to be this strange trend of fake flowers in planters that I just cannot wrap my mind around.
Old wives’ tale gardening trick that actually works:
Putting shallow dishes of beer out to help mitigate slugs.
Favorite gardening hack:
I still have yet to learn one…I asked my husband who, as I mentioned, captains the ship of our garden and he said “What’s a gardening hack? It’s all work. Always.”
Favorite way to bring the outdoors in.
Flowers from the garden or foraged.
Every garden needs…
Flowers from the garden or foraged.
Favorite hardscaping material:
This question is making me realize we have no hardscaping in our lives, but I do have a soft spot for pea stone (in theory).
Tool you can’t live without:
Garden clippers/snips.
Go-to gardening outfit:
Whatever I’m wearing that day, which is usually jeans and a t-shirt/sweatshirt.
Favorite nursery, plant shop, or seed company:
Locally: Barkaboom Native Plants—Chris is an incredible source of knowledge when it comes to native plants in our region and is a big proponent of using locally adapted ecotypes to help conserve local flora and the animals that rely on native plants, something we can all get behind. A little further south: Catskill Native Nursery in Kerhonkson is incredible; they carry the largest selection of North American native plants in New York with a focus on regional species. Story’s Nursery in Freehold is also a favorite.
On your wishlist:
Mullein, nicotiana, turk’s cap lilies, more bearded irises and hollyhocks too.
Not-to-be-missed public garden/park/botanical garden:
Wave Hill in the Bronx. The Landcraft Garden Foundation in Mattituck, NY.
The REAL reason you garden:
Because I love beautiful things. Because the thrill of walking out your door and down to the garden to pick ingredients you grew to cook dinner with is unmatched. Because pushing a seed into the ground and watching it become something is the sort of miracle that never ever gets old.
Thanks so much, Lisa! (You can follow her on Instagram @brass_tacks.)
See also:
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