26.09.2024 Views

Beach/House, Fall 2024

Shadows lengthen. The crowds are gone. The weather is at its most glorious. Autumn arrives and cozy season begins on the Outer Cape. It’s the time of year when people here head back indoors to tackle some of the household projects that were impossible to even think about during summer’s hubbub. Evenings that were spent dining outdoors are now savored in front of a fire. In this special edition of the Provincetown Independent's home, garden, and design pages, we’re easing our way into the fall projects that come before the year-end holidays and the promise of the new year ahead.

Shadows lengthen. The crowds are gone. The weather is at its most glorious. Autumn arrives and cozy season begins on the Outer Cape. It’s the time of year when people here head back indoors to tackle some of the household projects that were impossible to even think about during summer’s hubbub. Evenings that were spent dining outdoors are now savored in front of a fire. In this special edition of the Provincetown Independent's home, garden, and design pages, we’re easing our way into the fall projects that come before the year-end holidays and the promise of the new year ahead.

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

Scaling Up<br />

in the East End<br />

page 3<br />

Reclaimed<br />

Memories<br />

in North<br />

Truro<br />

page 6<br />

FALL <strong>2024</strong>


2 | Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | <strong>Fall</strong> <strong>2024</strong><br />

A N A R T I S T O W N E D S H O P I N T H E H E A R T O F W E L L F L E E T<br />

L O C A L A R T • C E R A M I C S • T E X T I L E S • J E W E L R Y<br />

3 1 3 M A I N S T , U N I T # 5 , W E L L F L E E T , M A<br />

@ S H O P I S A B E L S O U Z A • I S A B E L S O U Z A S T U D I O @ G M A I L . C O M<br />

Shadows lengthen. The crowds are gone. The weather is at its most<br />

glorious. Autumn arrives and cozy season begins on the Outer Cape.<br />

It’s the time of year when people here head back indoors to tackle<br />

some of the household projects that were impossible to even think<br />

about during summer’s hubbub. Evenings that were spent dining<br />

outdoors are now savored in front of a fire. In this issue, we’re easing<br />

our way into the fall projects that come before the year-end holidays<br />

and the promise of the new year ahead.<br />

Guest editor: Stephen Orr<br />

Contributors: Hannah Oakland, Kai Potter, Dorothea Samaha, Abraham Storer,<br />

Agata Storer<br />

Design: Susan Abbott<br />

Sales team: Cooper Joseph, Hannah Oakland, and Martine Taylor<br />

Escape the garden<br />

for the wilds.<br />

ON THE COVER: The compact top-floor den of Ryan Stanton and Robbie<br />

Goldstein’s East End condo is enveloped by Rutland wallpaper by Cowtan & Tout<br />

and features storage built-ins and views over the rooftops to the bay. Framed<br />

Cynthia Packard sketches pay homage to the Packard Gallery next door.<br />

(Photo by Sean Litchfield; styling by Sean Donovan; cover design by Chris Kelly)<br />

Outer Cape Cod in<br />

the quiet season<br />

By Kai Potter<br />

shop.provincetownindenpendent.org


Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | <strong>Fall</strong> <strong>2024</strong> | 3<br />

Upstairs,<br />

Downstairs<br />

Going big on design gives a small house room<br />

for entertaining and for retreat<br />

Reclaimed-wood cabinets contain dishes, serveware, and a pantry in the kitchen and dining area<br />

on the main floor. The cabinets are painted in semi-gloss Green Smoke by Farrow & Ball. Ryan<br />

Stanton recovered the antique couch in a white Pierre Frey boucle. “Everyone thinks that I’m<br />

insane for using it as a dining sofa,” he says. “So far, there’s only been one candle wax incident<br />

but that’s been hidden by a pillow.” (Photos by Sean Litchfield; styling by Sean Donovan)<br />

By Stephen Orr<br />

Provincetown is a high-density<br />

town. Case in point, what once<br />

was a small home in the East<br />

End with two buildings on a narrow<br />

lot recently became three condos<br />

squeezed into the previous buildings’<br />

footprints. There was no room<br />

for the builder to go out for the 2021<br />

down- to- the- studs new build, so he<br />

went up, doubling the one- and- a-<br />

half stories to three on the rear unit.<br />

For Ryan Stanton and Robbie Goldstein,<br />

prospective buyers, it definitely<br />

wasn’t love at first sight.<br />

The vertical stack of rooms joined<br />

by narrow staircases posed both design<br />

and practical problems that the<br />

couple, who also live in Boston, felt<br />

they would not be able to overcome.<br />

“We looked at the property when it<br />

was about 60 percent done,” says<br />

Stanton. “I think a lot of other potential<br />

buyers struggled to figure out<br />

how to utilize the space,” which is<br />

only 720 square feet, just 240 square<br />

feet per floor.<br />

Stanton, who has his own interior<br />

design company, Stanton Schwartz<br />

Design Group, was ready to move on<br />

with the search when Goldstein, the<br />

commissioner of the Mass. Dept. of<br />

Public Health, came up with the idea<br />

to rethink the floor plan and change<br />

the two- bedroom unit into a onebedroom,<br />

freeing up a top floor aerie<br />

that’s now a secondary living area.<br />

“For me, that space was the reason<br />

we bought the house,” Goldstein<br />

says. “It has everything I want for a<br />

place in P’town. You can see out over<br />

the town and the sea.”<br />

Once the layout was resolved, the<br />

couple asked the contractor to stop<br />

speccing the remaining materials<br />

and fixtures so they could personalize<br />

the project as it was being finished.<br />

“It was basically just white walls and<br />

subflooring, so I was able to get my<br />

hands on all of the paint colors, the<br />

marble, the hardware, the bathroom<br />

fixtures, the vanities, and all of those<br />

types of details,” says Stanton. “I had<br />

the chance to layer in our own flavor.<br />

It was, quite honestly, an interior designer’s<br />

dream come true to be able to<br />

get in early.”<br />

Much of the house’s sophisticated<br />

color scheme is inspired by a certain<br />

piece of stone that Stanton had<br />

tucked into his memory. “Two years<br />

before we bought the house, I went<br />

countertop shopping with a client<br />

and fell in love with the Italian marble<br />

that you see throughout the house,”<br />

he says. “I found it completely mesmerizing<br />

from the instant I saw it.”<br />

Finally able to use it, he deployed it<br />

liberally in the kitchen counters and<br />

backsplash, the upstairs bathroom,<br />

the third- floor built- ins, and even a<br />

little remnant on the outdoor patio.<br />

Its rich palette of dark greens, pinks,<br />

and blacks in wave- shaped patterns<br />

inspired the fabric and paint palette<br />

that knits together the entire house<br />

in ways not normally seen at a beach<br />

continued on page 4<br />

Robbie Goldstein, left, and Ryan Stanton stand in front of their house. An outdoor entertaining<br />

area accommodates dinner guests on the front porch. (Photo by Stephen Orr)


4 | Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | <strong>Fall</strong> <strong>2024</strong><br />

Upstairs, Downstairs<br />

continued from page 3<br />

residence. “We could have gone with<br />

more of a super- casual beach feeling,<br />

where the furniture is more of an afterthought,”<br />

says Stanton. “But we<br />

didn’t want to get too formal either.”<br />

To tackle the problem of the small<br />

rooms, Stanton turned to lessons he<br />

had learned designing other people’s<br />

homes. “We tried to scale things on<br />

the larger side,” he says. “People feel<br />

like they should do the opposite and<br />

go smaller with the furniture and fixtures.<br />

For instance, over three floors<br />

we have four very large sofas indoors<br />

and out. We wanted to make sure it<br />

was a place where as many people as<br />

possible could be comfortable.” Many<br />

of the design solutions involve builtins,<br />

since there was no way to get<br />

couches or armoires up the slim stairs<br />

and hallways.<br />

Stanton took other chances that<br />

most people would find risky in compact<br />

settings, such as a liberal use of<br />

patterned wallpaper both in the firstfloor<br />

powder room and the top- floor<br />

den. “When I first walked into the<br />

space as it was being built, everything<br />

was stark white,” he says. “I’m naturally<br />

moody, so I tried to find ways<br />

to layer in a mood.” Stanton had been<br />

waiting for a chance to use the wallpaper.<br />

“No client ever wanted it, but<br />

I went big and covered the walls and<br />

ceiling. When the windows are open<br />

it feels like you’re in a tree house. It<br />

brings down your blood pressure.”<br />

Stanton also had the luxury of<br />

being able to tap his various vendors<br />

to think through custom built- in<br />

storage possibilities because of another<br />

odd aspect of the house — it<br />

has no closets. The undersides of<br />

“It needed to be a workhorse,” says Robbie Goldstein of the galley kitchen that can house only smaller Italian appliances and a half-size refrigerator.<br />

“I can still make dinners for 20 people in it.”


Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | <strong>Fall</strong> <strong>2024</strong> | 5<br />

the bed have built- in drawers. The<br />

nightstands are also used as dressers.<br />

“Thankfully, we have additional<br />

storage in the basement for things we<br />

don’t access much,” he says.<br />

The house is built for entertaining.<br />

Goldstein, who is a passionate<br />

cook, loves having people over,<br />

whether it’s two or 16. “Robbie’s task<br />

is always the menu,” Stanton says.<br />

“We’re never in the kitchen together,<br />

because that’s a recipe for disaster.<br />

My task is ambience.” The house<br />

has speakers on every floor and the<br />

same candles burning throughout<br />

the house so that guests are receiving<br />

the same subtle scents and sounds<br />

as they move up and down the stairs.<br />

Goldstein loves the feeling of having<br />

a lot of people around one of their indoor<br />

or outdoor dining tables, even if<br />

it can be a bit tight. “For me, it’s that<br />

cozy feeling you get being surrounded<br />

by friends while you’re eating,” he<br />

says. “I think the Danes call it hygge.”<br />

This is a social house that’s<br />

meant to entertain guests, even if<br />

most of them can’t sleep over. “Our<br />

friends are still angry at us that we<br />

did not keep the second bedroom,”<br />

says Stanton. “So, yeah, this house<br />

is designed to entertain — but it’s<br />

also designed to be a nice refuge once<br />

people leave.” As nice as it is to see<br />

guests come, it can be just as nice to<br />

see them go.<br />

Stanton swapped out the original glass shower stall for his favorite Italian marble in the secondfloor<br />

bathroom. All the custom built-ins in the house are white oak.<br />

A mudhead-style portrait by Julian Cardinal hangs in the first-floor stairwell.<br />

A second-floor terrace off the bedroom is another spot to entertain friends while Goldstein<br />

cooks downstairs.<br />

The same Rutland wallpaper as in the den decorates the ground-floor powder room. Sconces<br />

throughout the house are by Roman & Williams Guild.


6 | Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | <strong>Fall</strong> <strong>2024</strong><br />

One of two kitchens in the house. Braunwyn Jackett is the in- house interior designer and Nate McKean the in- house builder and woodworker. (Photos by Agata Storer)<br />

In Truro, Memories of<br />

Old Provincetown<br />

At home with Nate McKean and Braunwyn Jackett<br />

By Abraham Storer<br />

Braunwyn Jackett and Nate McKean describe their North<br />

Truro house as having an “old- school Provincetown”<br />

aesthetic. “This is how we grew up,” Jackett says. The<br />

couple have deep Outer Cape roots. They dated when they<br />

were students at Provincetown High School and then went<br />

their own ways. McKean developed his construction chops<br />

in San Francisco and then Colorado, where there was a vibrant<br />

alternative building scene. He worked on everything<br />

from straw houses to post- and- beam construction and<br />

stucco buildings. After reconnecting out West, the couple<br />

moved back to the Cape 22 years ago and ended up making<br />

their home in Truro.<br />

When Jackett first walked into the house that she now<br />

shares with McKean, she knew it had potential. “Everyone<br />

thought we were crazy when we bought this house,” she<br />

says. “It needed a lot of work.” A friend had been living<br />

there and maintained an open, spacious floor plan. “It was<br />

a big hippie house,” says Jackett. “That’s why I wanted it.”<br />

Jackett and McKean have been renovating the home since<br />

2006, guided by a desire to preserve the feeling of that initial<br />

encounter.<br />

Burdened with mortgage payments, the couple didn’t<br />

have much of a budget for renovations or furnishings. But<br />

McKean, who is a contractor, was doing remodeling work<br />

in Provincetown and kept an eye out for discards and offcuts.<br />

“I was the dumpster diver guy,” he says.<br />

Working with found wood, McKean started out with<br />

simple projects: a coffee table and then a bed. The massive<br />

bed is constructed with large beams and an intricately<br />

carved headboard that he found at the swap shop. “It’s a<br />

challenge whenever it needs to be moved,” says McKean.<br />

“I love that it’s not perfect,” adds Jackett. “It tells a<br />

story of salvaged things.”<br />

Gradually their projects became more ambitious. “I<br />

give Nate ideas and he goes to town,” says Jackett. One of<br />

her ideas involved found tin, which McKean used to create<br />

a coffered ceiling by framing the tin in a tiered wooden<br />

grid. Another ceiling was constructed from the subfloor<br />

of a home on Montello Street in Provincetown. The thin<br />

Nate McKean and Braunwyn Jackett at their Truro home.


Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | <strong>Fall</strong> <strong>2024</strong> | 7<br />

‘The house has grown with us<br />

and there’s a piece of us in<br />

each stage of the construction.’<br />

— Braunwyn Jackett<br />

strips of wood reveal their age through stains, gradients of color, and<br />

the occasional rusty nail. McKean makes sure to clip all of the nails, but<br />

he doesn’t remove them or heavily sand the wood, preferring to leave<br />

traces of its past lives.<br />

The house, built in 1900, revealed some of its own treasures during<br />

the renovation. In one room, McKean removed the sheetrock and was<br />

captivated by the wood underneath. Rather than put insulation between<br />

the studs and build new walls with sheetrock, McKean left the wood<br />

exposed and affixed insulated panels on the outside of the house, over<br />

which he attached plywood and shingles. The result leaves the interior<br />

feeling beachy and rustic, alluding to the Outer Cape’s dune shacks and<br />

summer cottages.<br />

Jackett doesn’t mind their home’s continual evolution. “The house<br />

has grown with us, and there’s a piece of us in each stage of the construction,”<br />

she says. At first, they divided the house into two spaces: they<br />

rented out one half and the other was where Jackett and McKean lived<br />

with their three children. Their section of the house was once a barn, evidenced<br />

by the high, pitched ceilings. Now that the space is unified, they<br />

have the benefit of two kitchens and more space for hosting gatherings.<br />

As McKean developed his skills and creativity doing this renovation,<br />

the work opened a way for other professional opportunities. For about<br />

10 years he made custom furniture from salvaged and reclaimed wood<br />

for clients. Six years ago, he returned to contracting and established<br />

McKean Artisan Builders, which specializes in construction projects using<br />

reclaimed wood. Renovating the Mary Heaton Vorse house for interior<br />

designer Ken Fulk was one of the company’s first jobs.<br />

Fulk wanted the historic Provincetown home to be restored but<br />

made to look as if it hadn’t been touched. “We picked the house apart<br />

piece by piece and labeled every piece,” says McKean.<br />

Working on the closet- sized library at the Vorse house, McKean<br />

borrowed an idea from his own house. He proposed partitioning off the<br />

library using old window sashes from the house. Fulk liked the idea and<br />

gave him the green light.<br />

These days, McKean, who supervises a crew of 17 builders, is busy<br />

with houses other than his own. But Jackett says that doesn’t mean their<br />

renovation project is over.<br />

“I don’t think it will ever be finished,” she says.<br />

McKean says that, in addition to drawing on local aesthetics, the house integrates his experiences living in<br />

Hawaii, Mexico, Colorado, and Northern California.<br />

Make life happen<br />

with the equity in your home.<br />

Are you looking to renovate or build an<br />

addition? Maybe you’re planning for a vacation<br />

or paying off debt? Nikki Rickard is your savvy<br />

local partner who can help make that happen<br />

with a Home Equity Line of Credit.<br />

NMLS #22392<br />

Contact Nikki at 617.605.3667,<br />

nrickard@mycapecodbank.com.<br />

MEMBER FDIC | MEMBER DIF | EQUAL HOUSING LENDER | BANK NMLS #520663


8 | Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | <strong>Fall</strong> <strong>2024</strong><br />

In Truro, Memories of Old Provincetown<br />

continued from page 7<br />

McKean and Jackett capture an “old- school Provincetown” vibe in their interiors. (Photos by<br />

Agata Storer)<br />

Jackett found many of the light fixtures on Etsy.<br />

McKean made the sitting- room wall from reclaimed windows, an idea that he brought to his<br />

renovation of the Mary Heaton Vorse house.


Custom Building and Real Estate Services<br />

LaBargeHomes.com<br />

508-432-6360<br />

Credits: LDa Architecture and Read McKendree Photography


AMZehnder<br />

Gallery<br />

Contemporary Art, Craft and Design<br />

MFM<br />

Interiors / Art<br />

MFM Interiors, Truro<br />

By appointment.<br />

508-364-1272<br />

mfmint@comcast.net<br />

A. Zehnder “Surfacing, Page One,” 9 × 13 inches, low-fire clay with glaze<br />

25 Bank Street No. 3<br />

Wellfleet<br />

amzehnder@amzehnder.com<br />

@amzehndergallerystudio<br />

(508) 560-8249<br />

You Dream It.<br />

We Build It.<br />

From Eastham<br />

to Provincetown<br />

1532 US 6, Wellfleet<br />

508-237-7262<br />

Thorcapecod.com


Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | <strong>Fall</strong> <strong>2024</strong> | 11<br />

A grass compass seen last winter at Newcomb Hollow <strong>Beach</strong><br />

in Wellfleet. Blades of beach grass carving circles in the sand<br />

inspired the writer’s project. (Photo by Kai Potter)<br />

A weight, a wire, and a nail are cobbled into an apparatus that<br />

would mimic the action of a beach grass compass, carving<br />

circles into slate. (Photo by Cole Barash)<br />

A scratch circle the writer created by leaving a compass<br />

apparatus set up on an old slate roof tile on the beach over the<br />

winter. (Photo by Cole Barash)<br />

Scratch Circles<br />

Stories of the winter wind, the compass grasses, and the sand<br />

By Kai Potter<br />

We stood on the steps of the dune shack,<br />

chipped enamel cups full of strong coffee<br />

in our hands, and looked out over a world<br />

made clean and new. The footprints we left in the<br />

sand in the days before, records of our coming and<br />

going, were buried and smoothed over. The tumbling<br />

and skipping of grains of quartz and feldspar<br />

had filled our steps like windblown snow.<br />

I had waited for this chance to be in the dunes<br />

to think and write and live in a shack for a week<br />

with my partner, Eli, as if in some simpler time. A<br />

wind had been blowing off the ocean and through<br />

the hollows of the Province Lands for days when<br />

we got there. And all through the night it whipped,<br />

spraying the seaward side of the shack in sharp,<br />

sand- filled gusts. The pounding woke us and kept<br />

us restless and tight- chested until dawn. Out in the<br />

dunes, all the world, its rawness, beauty, and indifference,<br />

feels close to the skin.<br />

The morning was still. The wind had calmed to a<br />

light breeze, its fit had passed, its discontent blown<br />

out. Now it rested. We stepped from the wood stairs<br />

onto the smooth sand and walked to the beach, past<br />

the gap in the snow fence with its twisted wire ends<br />

that grab at your shirt, down the little dune, and to<br />

a trail nestled into a broad sandy valley edged with<br />

heathers, beach plums, and dune grass.<br />

We saw no other signs of steps in the sand. No<br />

human footprints, no winding snake’s path, no<br />

lobed paw prints of the fox. No living thing had left<br />

its mark yet today. Except one. Around each clump<br />

of dune grass, drawn in a clean line in the new sand,<br />

was a perfect circle.<br />

I’ve always called these marks grass compasses.<br />

But they are also known as scratch circles, and<br />

they appear on coastlines throughout the world,<br />

wherever there is sand, grass, and wind. Scharrkreis,<br />

a German word meaning “scrape circles,” is a term<br />

that archaeologists use to refer to versions left in<br />

sediment and discovered in the geological record<br />

dating as far back as the Precambrian.<br />

In the dunes, with time and space to sink deep<br />

into my fascination with these compasses, I would<br />

lie on my stomach on the sand, chin resting on my<br />

hands, and watch them form, one gentle breath of<br />

wind, one trembling blade, one grain of sand at a<br />

time. The wind, a subtle energy, comes down and<br />

moves through the dunes. The grass, a sensitive<br />

living instrument, responds. Its blades sway, pivoting<br />

from the central point of the stem, sweeping<br />

in little starts and broad, graceful arcs, turning like<br />

the needle and chisel points of a drawing compass.<br />

The tip of the blade brushes gently over the forgiving<br />

medium, and in a slow, patient, creative process,<br />

the sand yields to the sweeping of the grass,<br />

becoming a canvas for the process, telling the story<br />

of its own creation.<br />

After we left the dunes, the circles remained in<br />

my mind, and I set about finding a way to recreate<br />

them.<br />

I built a series of little apparatuses intended to<br />

act like clumps of beachgrass. They started simple,<br />

became more complex, and then, guided by nature’s<br />

designs, returned to simplicity. I used a weighted<br />

base and incorporated wheel bearings, an upright<br />

bolt for a stalk, steel wires as blades of grass, copper<br />

sails to feel the wind, and heavy nails fastened<br />

to the wire tips.<br />

These models needed to be sensitive enough<br />

to feel a light breeze and sturdy enough to last the<br />

winter, because the plan was to set them out in the<br />

dunes closer to home in Wellfleet. In October, Eli<br />

and I carried them out to Newcomb Hollow <strong>Beach</strong>,<br />

set them on old slate roof tiles that would bear the<br />

Scratch circles in a show at Gallery 7a in Provincetown. (Photo by Cole Barash)<br />

mark of the blades’ movements, and left them to sit<br />

until April. They lasted through winter storms and<br />

spring nor’easters, turning in the wind, inscribing<br />

circles in the stone.<br />

I don’t know why I felt compelled to recreate<br />

these stories of the wind, the grass, and the sand,<br />

but it seems I was not the first one to do it. Archaeologists<br />

working in South Africa believe that a recently<br />

discovered batch of Scharrkreis fossils there,<br />

100,000 years old, might have been made by early<br />

hominids. They would have observed sedge grasses<br />

drawing circles and, in a moment of inspiration,<br />

felt compelled to recreate them. If this is true, those<br />

scratch- circle fossils would be some of the earliest<br />

evidence of our human ancestors depicting prehistoric<br />

life. Early humans, sensitive observers, telling<br />

a story, making art.<br />

A collection of Kai Potter’s “On the Landscape” columns<br />

was published this year by Provincetown Independent<br />

Books. See shop.provincetownindependent.org.


At a Truro property, Keith LeBlanc left a pine that had died long before he started the project standing on a slope. It functions as piece of driftwood sculpture and haven for birds and<br />

wildlife. (Photo by Neil Landino)<br />

Blurring the Edges<br />

A landscape architect’s advice on how to help your garden — no matter how big or small —<br />

fit an Outer Cape setting<br />

By Stephen Orr<br />

Keith LeBlanc has focused for<br />

years on designing landscapes<br />

and gardens that eschew suburban<br />

ideals of clipped lawns and<br />

formal flower beds while seamlessly<br />

blending into our Outer Cape<br />

ecosystem. We asked the longtime<br />

Truro resident, who is principal<br />

of LeBlanc Jones Landscape Architects,<br />

to talk about the ways in<br />

which a property he designed for<br />

a local client makes a useful case<br />

study for helping any gardenmaker<br />

be successful in working<br />

with our rich palette of plants and<br />

geology instead of against it. His<br />

concepts are transferable enough to<br />

give any size project, from a small<br />

village back yard to a property in<br />

the woods, a stronger relationship<br />

to the wildness that surrounds us.<br />

Boundaries<br />

“We think about edges from the<br />

get- go,” says LeBlanc. “You’ve<br />

heard the expression, ‘Good fences<br />

make good neighbors.’ But isn’t it<br />

more interesting for people not to<br />

know exactly where the edges are?<br />

I love to blur the boundaries so it’s<br />

not immediately apparent where<br />

things end or begin. On the other<br />

hand, sometimes it adds to the design<br />

to say this is an edge. Maybe it’s<br />

a very tight situation. That restriction<br />

might give us a design opportunity<br />

to do an interesting fence,<br />

or a hedge, or a looser hedgerow of<br />

mixed plants.<br />

“We’re always trying to be less<br />

invasive in our projects, especially<br />

for larger properties like this one in<br />

Truro, which started out as an antique<br />

Cape with several additions<br />

and outbuildings. We want as little<br />

disturbance in the landscape as<br />

possible. Whether it’s an addition or<br />

putting up a new house, we’re very<br />

cognizant of how much disruption<br />

is required. Usually, a contractor<br />

will tell us their big trucks need 100<br />

feet, 360 degrees around the house.<br />

But we counter that by identifying<br />

trees that we want to keep, or we<br />

ask if the cleared area has to be all<br />

the way around the house. In terms<br />

of the edges, anything we can save<br />

will preserve some of the valuable<br />

existing conditions and natural<br />

setting.<br />

“Editing the edges is important<br />

while taking advantage of what’s<br />

right beyond your property. If<br />

you’re in a small back yard and the<br />

neighbors have a cloud of bayberry,<br />

why don’t you add one on your<br />

side that fits in with your design<br />

and borrows a bit of their yard? It<br />

makes both seem bigger. Let’s say<br />

there’s a fence — if they have a rose<br />

of Sharon on their side, put a rose of<br />

Sharon on your side. Your eye will<br />

connect them when you look out.”<br />

Plants and Lawn<br />

“When we were brought in on the<br />

project,” says LeBlanc, “the owners<br />

had a garden near the house<br />

with various perennials: artemisia,<br />

lavender, heather, and sedum next<br />

to an existing deck. But they told<br />

us they didn’t want to add more<br />

gardens that needed a lot of maintenance.<br />

Moving outward from<br />

the house to the views, there was<br />

a large lawn. We reduced its size<br />

and brought the edge of it closer<br />

to the house. Because we are in a<br />

conservation setback, we planted<br />

those areas with native grasses<br />

and shrubs. Closer to the house, we<br />

started to mix lavender with some<br />

of the ornamental grasses to tie the<br />

natural with the garden areas.<br />

“Our firm has always been<br />

native happy,” says LeBlanc.<br />

“Twenty- five years ago, it wasn’t<br />

so, but now people are embracing<br />

ecological reasons as they’re making<br />

decisions.<br />

“When it comes to lawn, we<br />

always ask our clients why they<br />

A mix of grasses and perennials frames views of Pame


isn’t once a week. We also have clients<br />

who are irrigation-conscious<br />

enough that they’re OK with the<br />

lawn becoming toasty in midsummer,<br />

even if it’s a summer house.<br />

In August, if it rains, then the lawn<br />

comes back. Generally speaking,<br />

lawns that allow some wild growth<br />

such as dandelions, crabgrass, and<br />

clover can be maintained by hand.”<br />

Trees<br />

“It’s educational to show our clients<br />

which trees are valuable and which<br />

are less so,” says LeBlanc. “Especially<br />

those that are invasive species<br />

or so diseased that they might<br />

fall on the house. A lot of urban areas<br />

have trees that have outgrown<br />

their usefulness. Removing a tree<br />

selectively along the edge can bring<br />

in a more interesting skyline.”<br />

Materials<br />

“Reuse is important to us,” says<br />

LeBlanc. “We used old bricks found<br />

on the site for new paving, pathways,<br />

and an apron. The homeowners<br />

love collecting driftwood<br />

and had made a garden arch of<br />

pieces gathered from the beach.<br />

They also created a kind of a ground<br />

cover of driftwood by laying it<br />

down horizontally so that plants<br />

can grow through and around it. We<br />

used reclaimed granite for the paving<br />

stones, which were once curbs.<br />

They have variable widths and an<br />

interesting roughness to them that<br />

ties into the landscape.”<br />

bayberry. The parking area is centrally<br />

located and visible between<br />

the new guest house and the main<br />

house. We made a rainwater permeable<br />

section of gravel, delineated<br />

by the granite paving stones,<br />

that morphs into the more flowery<br />

garden area.”<br />

Conservation<br />

“Anything within 100 feet of the resource<br />

area [a protected area such<br />

as a marsh or wetland] is in the conservation<br />

commission’s purview,”<br />

says LeBlanc. “The commission<br />

will allow you to do certain things<br />

if you can prove you’re protecting<br />

the resource area. In this case,<br />

we reduced the lawn and managed<br />

invasives. It helps that in our area<br />

there are a lot of conservation setbacks,<br />

because it makes homeowners<br />

think about native plantings in<br />

a different way. But we’re not going<br />

to only do what conservation<br />

mandates. We’re incorporating the<br />

concepts into the garden areas next<br />

to the house as well. That way the<br />

garden feels more at home in its<br />

environment, wherever your house<br />

is located.”<br />

want it. Is it purely a visual statement?<br />

Or do they want it for kids<br />

or dogs to play on? If it were up to<br />

me, I would avoid lawns, but there<br />

are different kinds. There’s the<br />

high-maintenance lawn, where<br />

the lawn folks come and spray and<br />

fertilize. And then there’s a native<br />

mix that’s mowable, and it’s not<br />

all fescues, so the mow schedule<br />

Driveways and<br />

Parking Areas<br />

“We rerouted the driveway, which<br />

used to run straight up the hill,”<br />

says LeBlanc. “So, reestablishing a<br />

new edge of natives there was important.<br />

The design zigzags probably<br />

more than I would normally do<br />

when laying out a driveway, but our<br />

clients were adamant that we keep<br />

all the trees. We designed the new<br />

driveway to have the strip of rough<br />

grass down the middle, like you see<br />

all over Truro. We just let whatever<br />

grows grow there so that it feels<br />

like you are driving up a dirt road to<br />

get to the house through pines and<br />

A permeable gravel and paver motor court sits next to the perennial garden. (Photo by Neil<br />

Landino)<br />

t Marsh from the house, which was designed by Hammer Architects. (Photo by Keith LeBlanc)<br />

Foraged driftwood creates an arch and low barrier along a walkway. (Photo by Keith<br />

LeBlanc)


For all your banking needs,<br />

Cape Cod 5 is here to help.<br />

kitchens + baths<br />

interior architecture<br />

Boston – Provincetown<br />

dianeburcz.com<br />

Jared Kuzia, photographer<br />

DBID Studio by appointment<br />

617.942.7152<br />

Reach out to us.<br />

137 Bradford Street, Provincetown<br />

Member FDIC<br />

capecodfive.com | 888-225-4636<br />

Elegant seaside dining with small town charm.<br />

Serving creative dishes made with local ingredients seven nights a week.<br />

Live Music | Entertainment<br />

Function & Event Space<br />

5 <strong>Beach</strong> Rd, East Orleans<br />

(508) 255 - 0212<br />

Serving mouth watering brunch and cocktails on our beautiful<br />

patio every weekend. Right on the way to Nauset <strong>Beach</strong>.


Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | <strong>Fall</strong> <strong>2024</strong> | 15<br />

Thomas Moses works in his North Truro shop. (Photos by Agata Storer)<br />

A Craftsman Finds the<br />

Power of Punk in Plywood<br />

Thomas Moses builds his own riffs on Cape Cod modern design<br />

By Abraham Storer<br />

When the Cape Cod Modern<br />

<strong>House</strong> Trust was a fledgling<br />

organization, Thomas<br />

Moses signed up to advance its mission<br />

to restore the Outer Cape’s modern<br />

houses, many of which were in<br />

the Cape Cod National Seashore and<br />

falling into disrepair.<br />

Moses had met the trust’s founding<br />

director, Peter McMahon, in 2007<br />

through a mutual friend and, captivated<br />

by the history of the modern<br />

houses, began commuting from his<br />

home in Belmont to barter his carpentry<br />

skills for the opportunity to<br />

occasionally stay in one of the houses<br />

with his wife, Milisa Moses.<br />

In 2014, Thomas came to Wellfleet<br />

to work for two weeks on the<br />

Weidlinger house, renovating it<br />

during the day and camping out in<br />

it at night. After a construction crew<br />

had to move on to another job, a tree<br />

fell on the roof, and Moses’s commitment<br />

to the project deepened. His<br />

two- week sojourn to the Cape has<br />

now turned into a decade.<br />

While working on the Weidlinger<br />

house, Moses spent his nights looking<br />

for real estate. At the time, a<br />

small house in Eastham could be<br />

had for a realistic price, he says. He<br />

moved out of the job site and Milisa<br />

joined him.<br />

For a time, Moses worked for<br />

and was mentored by craftsman and<br />

builder Cregg Sweeney of Orleans. In<br />

2020, he formed his own company,<br />

Dunehaus, where he merges his carpentry<br />

skills with a love for modern<br />

design.<br />

Many of the projects that Moses<br />

works on today pay homage to the<br />

history of modern architecture on the<br />

Outer Cape. Like many carpenters,<br />

he does things like interior trim and<br />

casework, cabinetry, built- ins, and<br />

restoration. But he’s more likely to be<br />

using plywood than more traditional<br />

materials. “I don’t do crown molding,”<br />

he says. Outer Cape style, he<br />

says, is above all about simplicity.<br />

In his shop at Tradesmen’s Park<br />

in North Truro, Moses points out a<br />

few samples of his favorite material:<br />

birch plywood. Whereas plywood is<br />

commonly used as a support material<br />

under flooring or in walls, Moses uses<br />

it as a finish material. On his projects,<br />

it’s usually the star of the show.<br />

Behind his workbench, he stores<br />

his materials and tools in two of his<br />

creations: a long floating plywood<br />

box bolted to the wall and a plywood<br />

desk accented with yellow and gray<br />

Formica laminate. Moses chooses<br />

high- quality prefinished plywood<br />

and typically leaves the edges of the<br />

plywood exposed rather than covering<br />

it with trim. The effect is clean,<br />

unfussy, elegant, and utilitarian.<br />

In Moses’s Eastham home, another<br />

of his floating boxes runs the<br />

length of a wall. Also constructed<br />

with ¾- inch plywood and featuring<br />

exposed edges, this box hangs under<br />

a bay window and hovers about a foot<br />

off the ground. Its height and width<br />

are both about 14 inches, making it<br />

unobtrusive, but its length provides<br />

continued on page 16<br />

At a house in Wellfleet, undercounter<br />

windows offer peeks of the pitch pines<br />

outside the kitchen.


16 | Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | <strong>Fall</strong> <strong>2024</strong><br />

A Craftsman Finds the Power of Punk in Plywood<br />

continued from page 15<br />

ample storage space for books and<br />

records.<br />

In his home office, Moses shows<br />

off another of his long horizontal<br />

structures: a wall- to- wall desk, one<br />

side for himself, the other for Milisa.<br />

Moses was inspired by a wall- to- wall<br />

table against a window in the office at<br />

the Kugel- Gips house — another of<br />

the houses restored by McMahon —<br />

which he admired for its continuous,<br />

strong surface but also its airy and<br />

open effect.<br />

Besides seeing its design potential,<br />

Moses appreciates plywood’s<br />

durability, seen, for example, in the<br />

Moses used ¾- inch plywood to create this floating box for storing books and records at his own<br />

house. (Photos by Agata Storer)<br />

The plywood kitchen built by Thomas Moses and designed by Anthony Lee for Ira Ziering and<br />

Godeleine de Rosamel in Wellfleet.<br />

kitchen at the Kuhn house, now a<br />

derelict in the Seashore in Wellfleet.<br />

“The house is rotted from the outside,”<br />

says Moses, “but it still has a<br />

beautiful kitchen built with ¾- inch<br />

plywood.” McMahon’s book, Cape Cod<br />

Modern, describes how the Kuhns’ architect,<br />

Nathaniel Saltonstall, “created<br />

a casually sophisticated cottage by<br />

mixing rough and refined finishes.”<br />

For early mid- century architects,<br />

McMahon says, plywood was an exotic<br />

material — one they enjoyed experimenting<br />

with. The industrial design<br />

duo Charles and Ray Eames were creating<br />

functional furniture from molded<br />

plywood in the early 1940s. By the<br />

late 1940s and early ’50s, when the<br />

trust’s Breuer and Weidlinger houses<br />

were built in Wellfleet, plywood had<br />

become “sort of a fancy material,”<br />

according to McMahon. Pine was used<br />

for subfloors and sheathing while plywood<br />

was reserved for interior paneling,<br />

exterior siding, and cabinetry.<br />

Weldtex was the go- to brand of<br />

plywood, a grooved material that is<br />

no longer produced. It has proved<br />

resilient over the years. The Kepes<br />

house, designed by Marcel Breuer in<br />

1949, used Weldtex for exterior siding<br />

and held up until recently when<br />

it was replaced with marine plywood.<br />

Weldtex was also used in interiors.<br />

For one of the trust’s restoration<br />

projects, McMahon and his team<br />

sourced some vintage Weldtex from<br />

a stairwell of what’s now the Harbor<br />

Stage theater, bartering the material<br />

for a sheetrock job.<br />

By the 1950s, plywood had become<br />

more ubiquitous, and its affordability<br />

and durability turned it more<br />

into a structural construction material,<br />

often hidden under flooring or<br />

walls. But architects, creative types,<br />

and design- minded customers have<br />

continued to favor it as a finish material.<br />

“It’s like exposed concrete,” Mc-<br />

Mahon says. “It has a down- market<br />

hipness.”<br />

When Moses was developing his<br />

carpentry skills in the Boston area,<br />

he was also playing in bands as part<br />

of the city’s hardcore and punk scene.<br />

His attraction to the architects of the<br />

modern houses had to do with their<br />

originality and anti- establishment<br />

ethos.<br />

“These architects were sort of<br />

punk,” he says. “They were picking<br />

poor materials to work with and<br />

experimenting.”<br />

In a kitchen Moses recently fin-


Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | <strong>Fall</strong> <strong>2024</strong> | 17<br />

Chrome yellow Formica provides a warm glow in the kitchen.<br />

Beveled edges allow Moses’s drawers to be<br />

opened without hardware.<br />

ished in Wellfleet, plywood is the<br />

primary material for cabinets, drawers,<br />

and surfaces, and although the<br />

effect is decidedly unpretentious, the<br />

project is executed with a degree of<br />

finish and skill more virtuosic than<br />

punk.<br />

Moses points out a bank of drawers<br />

under large windows. For the face<br />

of the drawers, he worked with two<br />

sheets of four- by- eight plywood,<br />

working to align the grain from<br />

drawer to drawer. A quarter- inch reveal<br />

separates the drawers — “a clean<br />

black line, a shadow gap,” says Moses.<br />

The drawers are beveled on the<br />

inside so they can be opened without<br />

any knobs, a detail that adds to the<br />

room’s minimalist aesthetic.<br />

Moses worked closely with architect<br />

Anthony Lee on the kitchen,<br />

which overlooks Fox Island Marsh<br />

on Wellfleet’s bayside. “Anthony<br />

had good drawings with a ton of detail,”<br />

says Moses. “It’s a super clean<br />

design. This is the kind of work that I<br />

like to do.”<br />

Lee and homeowners Ira Ziering<br />

and Godeleine de Rosamel chose<br />

sunny yellow Formica to cover the<br />

surface of the oversize, panel- ready<br />

refrigerator and a few other surfaces<br />

in the kitchen. The yellow along with<br />

the warm color of the plywood provide<br />

a radiant glow to the kitchen, especially<br />

during the late afternoon.<br />

Ziering purchased the house in<br />

1995 from Rodney Winfield, an artist<br />

who built it in the early 1970s in the<br />

style of Cape Cod’s modern houses.<br />

Winfield based its airy design on a<br />

few local houses he admired, pulling<br />

their plans at the town’s building department<br />

before getting to work. In<br />

2011, the house underwent a significant<br />

upgrade. McMahon, who is also<br />

an architect, drew the plans, and Nate<br />

Cook did the construction.<br />

The original house was built on<br />

a tight budget. “You couldn’t come<br />

when it was cold, the windows didn’t<br />

shut, it was termite- infested and<br />

damp,” says Ziering. “But it was<br />

beautiful. The renovations significantly<br />

improved the quality of the<br />

house, but Ziering was intentional<br />

about preserving the unpretentious,<br />

simple aesthetic and not using “any<br />

nicer- than- needed materials.” One<br />

of the features that remained were<br />

the plywood floors.<br />

“The old house had plywood<br />

floors because of economy,” says<br />

Ziering. “We wanted the floors to pay<br />

tribute to the original house.” The<br />

new floor is composed of sheets of<br />

four- by- eight plywood nailed down<br />

and painted a subtle beige.<br />

“The floor gets stained and<br />

scuffed up and scratched,” he says.<br />

“But we don’t have to worry about it.<br />

It makes it more beach house- y.”<br />

WELLFLEET<br />

1400 Chequessett Neck Road<br />

$4,900,000 | | 4 BD 3F 1H BA 3,157 SF<br />

Set along a secluded stretch of pristine beach in one of<br />

the most coveted Cape Cod National Seashore areas<br />

is this privately sited, contemporary post and beam<br />

home and a two-story guest house with 456 ft of beach<br />

frontage on Cape Cod Bay. You will be mesmerized by<br />

the natural beauty of this property’s dunescape and<br />

woodlands with sweeping views of Cape Cod Bay, Great<br />

Island, Herring River, and Wellfleet Harbor, which can be<br />

enjoyed in all seasons from this comfortable beachside<br />

property. Please call for a private appointment.<br />

Ashley Fawkes<br />

Broker Associate<br />

ashley.fawkes@compass.com<br />

508.237.1986<br />

Compass is a licensed real estate broker and Kinlin Grover Realty Group, LLC is a licensed real estate broker<br />

affiliated with Compass and each abides by Equal Housing Opportunity laws. All material presented herein is<br />

intended for informational purposes only. Information is compiled from sources deemed reliable but is subject to<br />

errors, omissions, changes in price, condition, sale, or withdrawal without notice. Photos may be virtually staged<br />

or digitally enhanced and may not reflect actual property conditions.


18 | Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | <strong>Fall</strong> <strong>2024</strong><br />

Kitchen<br />

Conundrum<br />

Small changes with big results<br />

for when a space doesn’t suit your style<br />

By Hannah Oakland<br />

When I was in the market to buy a house on the Outer<br />

Cape a little over a year ago, I knew I’d have to compromise.<br />

Along the way, I saw more than my fair<br />

share of awful kitchens, most of them design time capsules<br />

with outdated tile and flimsy cabinets. When I finally found<br />

the house I wanted, one thing I thought was an asset — a<br />

newly renovated kitchen — turned out to be the opposite.<br />

I tried to be grateful for the updated kitchen in my 1988<br />

colonial, even though I recognized that it didn’t fit me stylewise.<br />

I figured I could live with it and save some renovation<br />

costs, and guests would even say, “You’re so lucky to have<br />

this kitchen!” But a few weeks after I moved in, it started to<br />

get to me. The room was too closed- in and dark.<br />

Daydreams filled my head — of a breakfast bar for the<br />

kids, an open floor plan that matched how I like to get together<br />

with friends, and sunlight at all hours of the day.<br />

Being an avid DIYer, I grabbed a hammer to see what I<br />

was working with. I began by removing all the upper cabinets.<br />

I have an aversion to them: they impose a heaviness I<br />

don’t think many kitchens can absorb. I prefer open shelving<br />

instead. To me, if the kitchen is supposed to be the heart<br />

of the home, it ought to be airy and rhythmic, with an equal<br />

focus on functionality and flow.<br />

The goal of this kitchen renovation was simple: add more light. (Photo by Hannah Oakland)<br />

AFTER<br />

BEFORE<br />

Previously, the full kitchen wall kept guests and cook apart. (Photo<br />

courtesy TK)<br />

Now, a header provides the support needed to open the space up to the dining area. (Photo by Hannah Oakland)<br />

Once I removed the drywall to reveal only<br />

the framing, there was no turning back. The<br />

light that streamed in was as transformative as<br />

I’d hoped. I hit a snag, though, when I learned<br />

that the wall behind the stove was loadbearing.<br />

Installing a loadbearing beam is not a basic DIY<br />

project. It can be costly and time- consuming.<br />

So, I reinforced the existing construction with a<br />

header (a beam over an opening that carries the<br />

structural weight) and jack studs, which sit below<br />

the header for added support on each side. This<br />

created a picture- frame opening to a breakfast<br />

nook adjacent to the dining area. It provided the<br />

openness I wanted without my having to invest<br />

too much money or work.<br />

Thanks to a surplus of pantry space along the<br />

far wall, I was able to use one simple poplar shelf<br />

sourced from Northern Wild Design in Eastham<br />

to hold my tableware and be a design accent at<br />

the same time. I supported the shelf with floating<br />

brackets plus two ornate brass ones to tie into the<br />

sink hardware. Then I replaced the dated speckled<br />

pink laminate countertop with a large- format<br />

white quartz slab marbled with a warm brown<br />

from Granite World in Harwich — they also did the<br />

installation.<br />

The stark white lower cabinets had a sterile<br />

vibe, so I rolled them with a Behr cabinet paint,<br />

Aged Beige, and added antique brass pulls, which<br />

give the cabinets a rustic farmhouse feel. Then I<br />

stacked five- inch white ceramic tiles with a reflective,<br />

slightly wavy surface in a grid pattern that adds<br />

much more interest than generic flat white ones.<br />

By making natural light the focus of this kitchen<br />

makeover and letting that goal guide a few wellchosen<br />

changes, I was able to avoid the expense of<br />

a gut renovation and still create a more inviting and<br />

functional living space for my family and for guests.<br />

I really am lucky to have this kitchen.<br />

Open shelving makes for a lighter, more casual feel. (Photo by Hannah Oakland)<br />

The dining area gets a simple update from furniture with clean modern lines. (Photo by<br />

Hannah Oakland)


MAZZEO Construction<br />

Offering design,<br />

construction, remodeling,<br />

and handyman services<br />

on the Outer Cape<br />

Based in Orleans<br />

CUSTOM HOMES<br />

Building your new home or renovating your<br />

existing space can be stressful.<br />

SAUNAS & POOLS<br />

As experienced Cape Cod builders<br />

we will walk you through every step<br />

of the process, from start to finish.<br />

Honesty is our legacy.<br />

We keep everything transparent, no shortcuts,<br />

no hidden costs.<br />

ARCHITECTURAL DETAILING<br />

Give us a call and let us introduce you to<br />

our superior craftsmanship<br />

so we can transform your dreams into reality.<br />

56 Main St Unit F., Orleans MA 02653<br />

mazzeoconstructioncc@gmail.com<br />

508-360-3835


SOL<br />

CARPENTRY<br />

building, repairs + maintenance<br />

solcarpentry.com<br />

r. todd schwebel<br />

508-221-7794<br />

rtschwebel@gmail.com<br />

Box 618, Truro, MA 02666<br />

MA Contractor’s Lisc. #88414<br />

MFM studio<br />

Interiors / Art<br />

Visit DRIFT for beautiful and functional wares to enhance<br />

your coastal home and for New England-made goods and<br />

objects d’art to enjoy when you’re away from the sea.<br />

361 Main Street, Wellfleet, MA 02667<br />

www.driftwellfleet.com<br />

Seasonal hours and new items via Instagram @DRIFTwellfleet<br />

427 Commercial St<br />

Provincetown<br />

Open 11 am – 4 pm<br />

Thursday – Monday<br />

or by appointment<br />

508-364-1272<br />

Featuring work by M.DelVisco<br />

mdv3@comcast.net<br />

Consistently<br />

bringing distinction<br />

and elegance to<br />

residential interiors and exteriors<br />

to our customers and yours.<br />

Your One-Stop Source for Everything to Build With!<br />

DESIGN SHOWROOM | LUMBERYARD | CONTRACTOR DIVISION | HARDWARE | RENTALS | BENJAMIN MOORE | ANDERSEN DOORS & WINDOWS | FLOORING<br />

26 BOWDOIN ROAD | MASHPEE, MA | 508-477-3132 | VISIT BOTELLOLUMBER.COM


Provincetown Independent | BEACH / HOUSE | <strong>Fall</strong> <strong>2024</strong> | 21<br />

On a Former Gravel Pit,<br />

a Healing Garden Grows<br />

By Dorothea Samaha<br />

Fiona Mulligan is wearing a shirt<br />

that she hand- dyed using indigo<br />

she grew herself. The color is<br />

a dusty purple- blue that stands out<br />

against her deeply suntanned skin.<br />

Mulligan, who designs edible landscapes<br />

for others, tends her own in<br />

Eastham. She spends as many hours<br />

as she possibly can in her garden.<br />

“I’m not always doing work,” says<br />

Mulligan. “I like to watch the bugs.”<br />

Hers is a no- spray operation —<br />

not even the organic stuff. She trusts<br />

that the beneficial insects will devour<br />

the harmful ones. On one side of her<br />

land, a froth of flowering greenery is<br />

crawling with tiny black- and- orange<br />

bodies.<br />

“This was a celery plant that went<br />

to flower,” says Mulligan. She plunges<br />

a hand fearlessly into the mess.<br />

“All of these bugs here are called soldier<br />

beetles. Their larvae will eat the<br />

larva of pests.”<br />

It’s also a no- till operation. Mulligan<br />

walks barefoot down her swale<br />

walkways, careful not to tread on the<br />

dirt beds where her plants grow. “One<br />

step can hold a lot of pounds per inch,”<br />

she says. To make the beds, Mulligan<br />

broadforks them only once. They’re<br />

never compacted again. “That way,”<br />

says Mulligan, “the plants are able to<br />

root very deeply without struggle.”<br />

By mid- August, her eggplants and<br />

tomatoes have grown tall.<br />

Compacted soil causes all kinds of<br />

issues, says Mulligan: erosion, poor<br />

water retention, nutrient deficiencies.<br />

She’s protective of her painstakingly<br />

maintained loose dirt. The<br />

idea of people wandering around her<br />

garden, reckless and unsupervised,<br />

she says, “would be like if someone<br />

walked in and just took my boyfriend’s<br />

surfboards off the wall and<br />

started using them.”<br />

Her plants, which easily reach the<br />

deepest dirt, have good immune systems.<br />

At the end of the year, she cuts<br />

everything flat or pulls it up. In the<br />

spring, she adds a layer of compost on<br />

top. “That’s it,” she says. “It’s ready<br />

for the season.”<br />

Mulligan grows all the vegetables<br />

she might need for dinner:<br />

carrots and garlic, cucumbers and<br />

eggplants, peppers and tomatoes and<br />

beans. She also grows the ingredients<br />

for her tinctures, soaps, and salves,<br />

the things she sells labeled Healing<br />

Hands Apothecary.<br />

For her soaps she dries calendula,<br />

rose, evergreens, and lavender. In the<br />

rental cottage in Eastham she calls<br />

her herbal studio, she’ll grind the<br />

leaves or flowers into a powder, then<br />

pour it into the soap in the making.<br />

The result after one to two months of<br />

curing: speckled rectangles, colored<br />

blush, yellow, gray- green, and white,<br />

scented with essential oils, and ready<br />

to sell. The top of each soap is decorated<br />

with dried flowers, hinting at<br />

the scents within.<br />

She makes witch hazel products<br />

from her own hamamelis. There’s an<br />

arnica salve that incorporates cayenne,<br />

comfrey, and ginger for muscle<br />

pain. A glass jar, glowing in the lateafternoon<br />

light, contains a concoction<br />

for the face: cold- pressed apricot<br />

kernel oil and rosehip oil, infused for<br />

up to six months with other plants<br />

Mulligan has grown and dried. The<br />

blend, she says, will change based on<br />

what’s growing when she’s mixing<br />

her products.<br />

Mulligan, is certified in advanced<br />

clinical herbalism — a designation<br />

she earned through the American<br />

Herbalist Guild. But she says she’s<br />

grown weary of how trendy herbalism<br />

can be.<br />

Mulligan’s multipurpose calendula: it decorates her handmade soaps,<br />

is brewed in oil for her tinctures, and looks beautiful in her garden.<br />

A glass jar contains a concoction for the face: cold- pressed apricot kernel oil<br />

and rosehip oil, infused with a variety of helpful plants Mulligan has grown.<br />

Fiona Mulligan’s handmade soaps are scented with essential oils and decorated with herbs and<br />

flowers from her own expansive garden. (Photos by Agata Storer)<br />

“A lot of the information out<br />

there has been scaring me,” she<br />

says. “People think what they’re doing<br />

is safe just because they’re using<br />

plants.” She doesn’t sell her herbs as<br />

medicines, she says. “I don’t want<br />

someone taking a willow tincture<br />

just because they heard it’s good for<br />

something.”<br />

Mulligan grew up in Rutherford,<br />

N.J., then farther west, in the town<br />

of Harmony. At 18, she moved to England<br />

to attend Newcastle- Upon-<br />

Tyne University, where she studied<br />

nutrition. There she had a realization,<br />

she says: “Eating and growing<br />

much of your own food and living<br />

a life close to the land is one of the<br />

most timeless ways to be happy and<br />

healthy.” She pursued that idea on<br />

stays in India and on travels in Ireland,<br />

Peru, Puerto Rico, and Ecuador.<br />

In each place she found herself<br />

studying village farms and exploring<br />

herbalism. In India, she said, “I<br />

Mulligan gathers comfrey in her no- till garden.<br />

was tilling fields with horses at one<br />

point.”<br />

Back in the U.S. and looking for a<br />

place to farm, she followed the advice<br />

of a friend who lives in Brewster and<br />

moved to the Cape, where she met her<br />

boyfriend, Matt Rivers. He hired her<br />

to work on the land behind the house<br />

where they now live. “He wanted a<br />

vegetable garden,” says Mulligan.<br />

She decided the garden should be<br />

bigger. Now it stretches to something<br />

like 100 feet long.<br />

For her birthday last year, Rivers<br />

bought her arched trellises, which<br />

frame the entrances to the garden.<br />

Climbing up one of them is a schisandra<br />

vine, a plant native to the forests<br />

of northern China, the Russian<br />

Far East, and Korea. Also called the<br />

five- flavor berry, it’s considered<br />

an adaptogen: a plant that helps the<br />

body to respond to stress.<br />

Tucked beside the trellis are<br />

three varieties — Krishna, Vana, and<br />

Kapoor — of tulsi, which is native<br />

to tropical and subtropical regions<br />

of Australia, Malesia, Asia, and the<br />

western Pacific. Mulligan doesn’t include<br />

tulsi in the products she sells<br />

— the plant is sacred in India, she<br />

says, so she doesn’t want to monetize<br />

it. “The leaves are fun to crunch<br />

and smell,” she says, handing over a<br />

sprig. Vana tulsi, especially, is enticingly<br />

aromatic; it smells like a blend<br />

of clove and cinnamon in a strong,<br />

warm tea.<br />

She moved to Eastham for<br />

her relationship, she says, but she<br />

wouldn’t have ended up on a farm in<br />

Maine, like the one some friends of<br />

hers just bought. “I need to be close<br />

to the ocean,” says Mulligan, even<br />

though it means farming only a very<br />

small space.<br />

“I always envisioned 50 acres for<br />

myself,” says Mulligan. “I’d love to<br />

have cows and pigs and chickens.” On<br />

the other side of the property, there’s<br />

a little orchard — “not ideal,” says<br />

Mulligan. “Long story.” The soil is<br />

sandy and prone to erosion, she says,<br />

since the whole property used to belong<br />

to Brewster Sand & Gravel.<br />

But Mulligan grows what she can.<br />

“The hazelnuts are actually pretty big<br />

and fat right now,” she says.


THE COASTAL COMPANIES<br />

Cape Cod’s Premier <strong>Beach</strong> <strong>House</strong> Design Build Firm<br />

• Custom Builders<br />

• Renovations<br />

• Additions<br />

• Kitchen & Bath<br />

Remodeling<br />

• Pools & Landscape<br />

buildwithcoastal.com<br />

Contact us at 508-240-2114<br />

info@buildwithcoastal.com<br />

coastallanddesign<br />

the_coastal_companies


Andersen: Windows that look good when the weather doesn’t.<br />

“Andersen” and all other marks where denoted are trademarks of Andersen Corporation.<br />

©2023 Andersen Corporation. All rights reserved.<br />

HINCKLEY<br />

HOME & DESIGN CENTER<br />

138 Route 137 ♦ Harwich, MA<br />

508.432.8014 www.hinckleyhomecenter.com<br />

♦<br />

“family owned since 1872”<br />

VINEYARD<br />

HOME & DESIGN CENTER<br />

454 State Road ♦ Vineyard Haven, MA<br />

508.693.3227 ♦ www.vineyardhomecenter.com<br />

Pam Can Help You Create Your Own Original Masterpiece<br />

Pam Boyle<br />

Designer


Together, we can help<br />

everyone on their<br />

path to a home…<br />

Donate to the Wellfleet Housing Trust today.<br />

Day | Logan Group<br />

daylogangroup@compass.com<br />

Support Local,<br />

Support Housing,<br />

Support the Community.<br />

Kait Logan<br />

REALTOR ®<br />

kaitlogan@compass.com<br />

M: 845.532.3864<br />

Katy Day<br />

REALTOR ®<br />

katy.day@compass.com<br />

M: 313.478.0414<br />

2548 Route 6 • Wellfleet, MA 02667 • compass.com<br />

Compass is a licensed real estate broker and abides by Equal Housing Opportunity laws. All material presented herein is intended for informational purposes only. This is not intended to solicit property already listed. Nothing herein shall be construed as legal, accounting or other<br />

professional advice outside the realm of real estate brokerage.

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!