How Unlimited Earth Care's Frederico Azevedo Is Designing Hamptons Landscapes

Frederico Azevedo, an award-winning landscape designer based in the Hamptons, has had his work shown in magazines, books and galleries, as well as gracing a wide range of East End properties. His landscapes have been showcased in Hamptons magazine, House Beautiful and Architectural Digest, as well as exhibits at galleries such as the Leo Castelli Gallery. His designs span landscapes from the Hamptons to New York City, Miami to Palm Beach and other locations.

If paintings often hang in galleries, Azevedo’s work, like canvases, in big part also is based on color. While painters use watercolors or other materials, Azevedo paints with plants, working in setting, water, sky and perspective as part of the blend.

A member of the Association of Professional Landscape Designers, the American Horticultural Society and the Horticultural Alliance of the Hamptons, his work has won him an East End following. He and Unlimited Earth Care have been named Dan’s Papers readers’ choice for Best Landscaper / Gardener numerous times, and he was inducted into Dan’s Papers Best of the Best Hall of Fame as Best Landscaper / Gardener.

He brings a mix of technical and aesthetic skills to landscape design, turning landscapes into canvasses with the colors that he and his clients choose to adorn their property.

“Color is everything. It’s at the center of my approach to landscape design,” he says. “When I’m creating a view from the windows of a house, or framing a path, I approach it through color.”

Azevedo creates landscapes that provide mood fueled by methods that come with years of experience and expertise. Selecting plants can help define a designer’s work, but Azevedo says choosing colors, mixing and matching, helps viewers see both each landscape’s look and his unique approach.

“My color palettes are my signature,” he adds. “I compose them very carefully, pairing hues that complement one another and only working with plants and flowers that thrive together.”

Azevedo, however, doesn’t always take the same approach to color for each landscape. Instead, he blends colors in different ways, always cognizant of where he is working.

“Sometimes I work with the color wheel. Purple is the complement for yellow,” he says, “And other times I follow my own sense of color. Flowerbeds in only one color can still be very rich when I use a range of hues.”

Azevedo loved nature and gardening since his childhood in Brazil, before studying garden and landscape design in England and then moving to the United States. He in 1993 launched Unlimited Earth Care, based in Bridgehampton. Azevedo later opened The Garden Market, a plant and flower store with a curated selection of native and well-adapted plants, flowers and herbs, and his Garden Concept Store, selling garden accessories, planters and outdoor furniture.

You can see some of his work in “Bloom: The Luminous Gardens of Frederico Azevedo,” available at the Unlimited Earth Care store in Bridgeport. And it’s possible to shop for plants at his store that let you find colorful accents and touches. Still, Azevedo knows landscape design means designing with plants that not only look good, but are a good fit for the environment they’re planted in.

“I use only native and well-adapted plants and flowers, so everything I use in my designs is suited to the environment in the Hamptons,” he says. “The Hamptons are diverse. It has more than one type of environment, so I have to ensure I understand the specific conditions of that property before I begin designing.”

Different flowers provide different colors, with each like a brushstroke in the larger work of the landscape. He likes to use vibrantly-colored plants such as alliums, which he says “have a beautiful purple/fuchsia color, and a wonderful graphic shape that helps break up the line of a flowerbed.”

He also often uses lythrum, which has a “lovely soft texture and spiked purple blooms.” And he loves to design with dahlias, which come in a range of color combinations. “Dahlias with multiple colors in one bloom are especially beautiful,” he adds. “In a recent design I planted dahlias with deep reds at the center and soft yellows at the edges.”

Colors change with the seasons, allowing landscapes to be living, breathing works of art. While people may seek to walk through appealing landscapes during warmer months, they still look at them during the winter months, too.

“I always design year-round gardens that are beautiful even in the middle of winter. I do this by creating borders made up of different evergreens, such as Colorado blue spruces and cryptomeria, which creates depth and privacy,” he said. “It’s important when it’s snowing to look out the window and see green. Studies have shown that it’s very beneficial for one’s mental health, especially in the winter.”

While landscape design certainly draws parallels to painting, Azevedo prefers to compare his profession to another art form. Paintings are static fixtures that typically hang on walls, while landscapes are seen and lived with in an entirely different way.

“People often ask me if garden and landscape design is like painting, but it’s actually much more like animation, and I find that I’m very inspired by the color palettes in animation because they’re in motion,” he says. “The color palettes that I’m designing are alive and they move and change with the seasons, so when I compose a color palette I think about how everything will change and move, and it has to be beautiful through all of that.”

The feel of a landscape goes beyond color. Plants also provide texture, giving a sculptural, three-dimensional aspect very different from painting on canvas.

“My approach is to have varied textures and heights to create interest through wind and change,” he says.

While many think of color as a kaleidoscopic range, subtler shades and hues also can animate a design.

“Sometimes, a large green area is the right choice for a design. It creates a space for activity and entertaining, and can help a smaller space feel larger,” he says. “I’ve also designed entirely-green gardens by focusing on texture and shape.”

There is, however, a full range of greens that can provide variety, shades that let you see a spectrum within this one primary part of the palette of landscaping.

“There are so many hues of green, so focusing on greens and planting a design entirely with green plants is an approach that can have very unique results,” he says. “A rich palette of green hues is very calming, and I often use this technique for designing calm spaces if a client has requested a place to read or meditate.”

If seasons and times change landscaping, Azevedo and Unlimited Earth Care also provide truly “unlimited” care after gardens and landscapes are done. All things require retouching and maintenance, including landscape.

“We don’t only design gardens and landscapes. Unlimited Earth Care also installs and maintains those designs. We’ve been maintaining some of my designs for over a decade,” he says. “The designing part of the process is important, and receives a lot of attention, but it’s also very important to me that the designs are properly cared for and maintained using sustainable practices wherever possible.”

Local expertise also is essential to successful landscape design. A designer needs to know the weather, soil, and so much more about a region, to understand what plants and flowers thrive, or there’s the risk that a beautiful landscape won’t survive.

“My knowledge of the many local environments in the Hamptons is key to what I do,” he says. “I founded my firm in Bridgehampton in 1993, and the reason I wanted to build my firm here is because of its incredibly diverse environments — farm fields, oceanfront, the bay, the woods — and sometimes just down the road from one another. So, every design is a challenge, which I love. The challenge inspires me to remain creative.”

Unlimited Earth Care is located at 2249 Scuttle Hole Road, Bridgehampton and can be reached at unlimitedearthcare.com or 631-725-7551. You can sign up for Azevedo’s Unlimited Earth Care garden newsletter by visiting the UEC website,  through info@unlimitedearthcare.com and on Instagram @unlimitedearthcare.

-PARTNER CONTENT