Island Profile: Parents’ gardens inspired son of stone mason

Amedeo Teseo, (pronounced Te-SAY-o), 46, began his life fulfilling his parents dreams for him — then changed course and fulfilled his own dream, running his own garden design and maintenance company in a place he loves.

His mother and father emigrated to America from Italy, from small towns in the Abruzzo region on the Adriatic coast, settling in the early 1960s outside Philadelphia. Amedeo’s father, Renato, was a stone mason as his father had been. They could build houses, walls, fireplaces — anything from stone. They wanted a life different for Amedeo. Their first-generation American son should go to college and work with his head, not his hands.

He did, graduating in 1987 from New York University, having majored in Italian, one of the few subjects he really loved. He went to work in the public relations field in New York City, where he was also living.

But during the years that followed, his thoughts were often of his childhood and his family’s home and garden. His father had bisected their sloping backyard with a stone wall and stone steps from one level to the next, with two gardens, each blooming against their grey backdrop.

His parents had worked hard in the gardens and Amedeo worked right along with them, loving it most of the time — “except for the weeding, of course.” Family outings with aunts, uncles and cousins, were almost always garden oriented. Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania was a favorite destination.

One summer after his father’s death — he thinks it was 1997 — Amedeo was home with his mother for the weekend, helping her clean up the garden. The weather was idyllic, “simply an ideal day,” he remembered, “the sun, the birds, everything.” He kept thinking that there had to be a way for this experience to be a bigger part of his life but couldn’t imagine how that might come to be.

Then one evening, back in Manhattan, he saw a TV program about famous gardens of the world. When the credits rolled, he saw that much of the footage had been filmed at Wave Hill, a public garden in the Bronx on the Hudson River, 20 minutes north of where he was sitting. When he saw the names of those in charge on the screen, he grabbed a pencil and paper.

He was electrified. “I thought, okay, let me see what I can do with this. I couldn’t sleep, it was close to midnight. But I sat down and wrote a letter to Stufano.”

That’s Marco Polo Stufano, then director of horticulture at Wave Hill, since retired, and yes, another first generation Italian American. Amedeo asked for his advice, wondering how to go about making gardening a part of his life, asking if there was a way this could be his livelihood. To his amazement, Stufano telephoned several days later.

“I was so terrified to speak to him, I let it go to voicemail. I wanted to hear his voice first, what he sounded like. I expected to be rejected, sent packing, but it was not at all like that. I was so excited.”

Stufano invited him to Wave Hill, told him which bus to take, and several days later, the phone rang. Their meeting led to a job offer. There was a “seasonal position” available. Did he want it? In that moment, his whole world shifted — he didn’t hesitate even for a moment. The answer was an unequivocal yes.

“So I went to work there. I used to get up at 4:30 in the morning. I liked taking the early trains, as early as I could. I needed to catch up with the interns and the gardeners, their knowledge of plants. I had a natural sense of how to grow things and take care of plants but I didn’t have the botanical nomenclature so I found myself getting there before anyone else, just walking the gardens trying to take as many notes as possible.”

Working “alongside the best gardeners in the country,” he went on to become a full-fledged staff member and eventually to curate the aquatic gardens there.

“I worked very hard. I wanted to prove myself and they saw that I was driven and I appreciated that so much, that they recognized my passion.”

Stufano turned out to be not only a mentor but a dear friend. Amedeo stayed at Wave Hill until 2005, when he went on to other jobs: He worked as assistant to the head gardener at Martha Stewart Living, at her private estate near Westport, and did the same thing at David Rockefeller’s estate in Sleepy Hollow, Hudson Pine Farms. He then did rooftop gardens in Manhattan for the Window Box concern of Maggie Geigers, having the fun of “doing” Anna Moffo’s penthouse garden as well as Richard Avedon’s.

It was perhaps inevitable, since his life seems to have followed some predetermined direction, that he would eventually land on the East End. He was hired to manage an estate in East Hampton, one of his few positions without living arrangements included. He soon found a place to rent in Sag Harbor, “and I knew I wanted to live out here for the rest of my life.”

When a friend suggested an excursion to Shelter Island, he accepted, came off South Ferry and “I fell in love. There was a peacefulness, a quality of life I could imagine being a part of. I mean, you can’t get away without saying hello to the person who walks by and that just drew me closer to wanting to be a part of it.” He bought a house here a year and a half ago.

Through a friend he was introduced to Sylvester Manor, wandered through its once formal gardens, saw the boxwood and the famous copper beech tree. He heard about Alice Fiske, and not knowing she had died, wondered if she needed a gardener. “I was just blown away. What a jewel, so intriguing, you could feel the history and the passion that the former gardeners had.”

And now he’s there, volunteering his time to teach workshops, lead Saturday morning crews hard at work cleaning up the formal gardens and sitting in as a member of the Building and Grounds Guidelines Committee. He’s also started his own company, Hortology, that does garden design. and maintenance.