Patrick Parcells had driven past Oriole Farm on Manhanset Road many times, and with the exception of glancing at the unusually long stretch of beech hedge, never thought very much about it. From the road, it looked like the stretches of Mashomack visible from Route 114; any space between the large trees was filled with thicket and impenetrable underbrush and the trees themselves choking in their shrouds of bittersweet. It was not land you could take a walk in, it was land you could only look at from the road and wonder how it got that way.

But when he and his wife,

Annbeth Eschbach, who had been Shorewood residents for over 20 years, failed in their effort (with two other investors) to buy the Garr property, the land suddenly took on a whole new dimension. They wanted to build and they wanted significant acreage — but did they want Oriole Farm, which was in such terrible condition, and, even if they did, was it available? These were the questions they had to answer.

Enter Georgiana Ketcham. She told them that the land had belonged to the Hench family, Allie Fiske’s parents, and was a little over 18 acres, actually comprising 10 percent of Dering Harbor Village, and that years ago it had been connected to the manor house property. There had never been a house there, although there was a barn and an old greenhouse, she thought. Mrs. Fiske’s’s parents had been avid gardeners, as she was herself, and had used the acreage for a series of gardens — a rose garden, an herb garden, a cutting garden and so on, all with stone steps and paths of slate leading to the greenhouse. She didn’t know if it was for sale but she would check. As it turned out, Mrs. Fiske’s father, LaVerne Hench, had left the land to his granddaughters in trust, and Mrs. Fiske was the trustee.

Fortunately for the owners there seemed no easy way to split the land up among the granddaughters. And so Mr. Parcells said, “After months of drinks and dinners and questions about our plans and after promising that I would do everything I could to preserve the character of the property,” a deal was struck in 2001. They then granted a conservation easement to the Peconic Land Trust (PLT) that provides for about 13 acres of open space along with a scenic easement that protects the 70-year-old beech hedge, one of only two standing on the eastern end of Long Island. John Halsey, president of the PLT, and Hoot Sherman, trust project manager, were instrumental in establishing the easement. Tim Hogue, Mayor of Dering Harbor Village, and the village trustees were also helpful. The owners could have divided the remaining land into six available building sites, but decided on three. Their current home is in the center portion.

With all the legalities finalized Mr. Parcells then confronted what lay before him, and amazingly enough, he wasn’t daunted. “We set about trying to clean the place up,” he said. “We didn’t come in with bulldozers and push things down. I got some local guys, Jimmy Lenzer came and Chris Johnson and some others, to help and we did most of it by hand. It took a lot more time and a lot more money than I thought it would, but we got it sorted out. The original driveway was through the hedge and you could see the east end of the greenhouse and most of the potting shed, the part in the middle, but you couldn’t see the west end of the greenhouse at all.” And they didn’t know it was there. It wasn’t until they came with saws and “we cut our way through the front door that we were able to get inside and that’s when we discovered there was another wing to the greenhouse. And it was just a mess. Most of the glass was broken. But the wood was in surprisingly good shape, cypress, for a building built in 1940.” There were, he pointed out, huge beeches on the far side of the greenhouse, which apparently gave it considerable shade and it may be that degree of protection that was significant.

Mr. Parcells didn’t know a lot about trees. But he knew what he didn’t know and reached out to those with the knowledge he needed. Peconic Plant Care came on board. So did Bartlett Tree Experts, and everyone went to work. They identified and tagged every tree and went on record as to the needs of each. They cabled the upper reaches of the huge copper beeches together for additional safety and support. And they advised Mr. Parcells about what could be saved and what could not. He told them, especially after they discovered a still living orchard on the far side of the land, “Anything you come to that can stand on its own, leave it alone, no matter how tortured it looks, let it be.” And he set out to save them.

“Once we took the bittersweet out, there were whole trees that were virtually naked, with no leaves at all on one side of them. It’s nasty stuff but not so hard to get rid of. It’s not hard to cut and once you cut it it’ll die as long as you keep cutting it. But it’s a lot of work because for the next three or four years pieces keep on falling to the ground and you’re constantly cleaning the place up. But the beech trees came back nicely. In the summer, they’re stunning. And we have over a dozen apple and pear that are still productive.” There was an allée of holly that was almost dead as well and that, too, is now not only alive but thriving. Their 10-year-old son rushes back and forth happily underneath it.

He didn’t know much about greenhouses either. But once again he found the right guy to talk to and bring on board — he found Mark Ward of Ward Greenhouses who had cultivated a following by turning old greenhouses into outdoor rooms, party areas or, sometimes, working greenhouses (Ward had restored Edith Wharton’s, built in 1902 on her estate in Lenox,

Massachusetts!). Mr. Parcells had never heard of either Lord or Burnham but he found he actually owned a Lord and Burnham greenhouse; the company was famous for having built some of the largest and most well-known greenhouses in the country, among them the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh and the New York Botanical Garden greenhouses in the Bronx. Together, and again working slowly and largely by hand, they replaced all the panes with tempered glass because it was so much safer, repaired the entire frame, scraping and sandblasting, then painting, and repaired or replaced all the machinery that opened the roof and the sides of the greenhouse to the air. Although the giant L&B greenhouses are famous, over the years when the little ones got dirty or needed repair they were simply thrown away; and so they’ve become collector’s items. And one sits prettily, shiny, white and good as new, in full working order, directly behind the Parcells new house.

He didn’t know much about barns either but found one back in his newly-purchased woods. To put it gently, it was falling down and filled with junk; it had also been a home to raccoons for many years. It’s important to realize that there had been no activity on the property, no human usage (other than some illegal brush dumping when it was still passable) since, Mr. Parcells believes, the mid-1940s. But once again he found the people he needed; he hired a company that moved houses whole and got a lot of help from Bob Reylek and Jack Ketcham. He had the company jack up the barn, had a foundation built underneath and the barn lowered onto its new base. He replaced the roof and most of the rotting shingles. It’s no longer a twisted wreck but now a spacious, solid barn with many small rooms and storage areas and a large main room at one end. The room currently houses around 1,000 board feet, milled voluntarily by Mike Loriz, from two huge oak trees that had to be removed. And the stones and slate pieces from the old garden walls and paths are stacked right outside, waiting to be recycled into something new and beautiful. Many of the little cubbyholes have metal labels on the outside, “hoses” for example, from former times.

Mrs. Fiske told him that the tiny rooms had been “the slave quarters for the old Manhanset Hotel” and when Mr. Parcells said that perhaps by that time New York State had already passed emancipation laws, Mrs. Fiske answered, “Well, I don’t know what they called them, but I know what they were — they were slaves!” And the property does sit on part of the old Manhanset Hotel land, Mr. Parcells thinks close to its 18th hole. The site of the old Manhanset Chapel, now across from Planet Bliss, moved there by horse and wagon in 1914, he thinks is toward the rear and north of their new home. The hotel was across the road on the water side. Several of the homes still standing there were part of the original hotel complex. Many of them had no kitchens — their owners took their meals at the hotel.

When asked what made him take on such an enormous project and go about it so carefully, actually lovingly is not too overdone a word for his approach, he said he wasn’t sure. “Especially with hindsight,” he said, “you have to wonder why anyone would want to do it. But I made my living on the market as a trader and I really enjoy being outside and working with my hands.” Traders don’t work outside. And they use computers. “I didn’t appreciate the magnitude of the job until I took it on. You don’t really appreciate it until you’re doing it. It didn’t trouble me to take it on, though, it’s immensely satisfying to transform things. I knew I could take this from being a rundown mess and turn it into something special. And we’re well on the way.”

His only complaint is about their home there, which he built over a period of more than three years. There are no painted surfaces on the outside of the house, it’s all stone and stucco and cedar. “It doesn’t look new and shiny,” he said, “which was what we wanted.” But it turned out to be too large for them and their plan now is to sell it fairly soon and build themselves something smaller on one of the two remaining building sites on the property. But he’ll still have the greenhouse, the hedge and his copper beeches to enjoy. As far as the hedge is concerned (Chris Johnson takes careful care of it) check it out as you drive by — it should be leafing out any minute now!