Popularised by the composer Richard Wagner, the term Gesamtkunstwerk encapsulates a ‘total work of art’, in which every single element contributes to a unified whole. Typically, it’s used in architecture to convey the fact that everything from a building’s volume to something as banal as a loo lock was authored by its maker. Given that they are the very definition of world-building, gardens have, somewhat surprisingly, been excluded from this categorisation. This new book might just change that.
Chronicling the creation of the late artist, writer and gardener Robert Dash’s home and garden, located in the salt-laden winds of Sagaponack on New York’s Long Island, it outlines how, over the span of 40-plus years, Dash transformed a flat plot of land surrounded by corn fields into Madoo, a lush, two-acre oasis encapsulated within tall privet hedges. Here lies a secret world that is completely singular to Dash, assembled in the same way that he approached his painting, which is to say haphazardly. A series of trials and errors resulted in a landscape organised not into traditional garden rooms but bewildering moments that bleed into one another; intermittent quotes by Dash describe how he thought of these spaces in pictorial terms, treating them as individual exhibitions within a larger gallery space.
While the plant palette Dash painted with might feel a bit stodgy today – astilbe, euonymus and hydrangea feature heavily – the methodology with which they are assembled and cared for is where the artist’s vision shines through. At the garden’s entrance, Paulownia tomentosa, a notoriously invasive tree found sprouting up between cracks in New York City sidewalks, is cut to the ground every year to ensure the return of juvenile shoots featuring elephantine leaves; deeper in, a stand of fastigiate ginkgos has been closely planted and pruned hard to result in a numinous sequence of sculptural columns underplanted with clipped box balls.
Graphic paths in unusual materials criss-cross the space, underscoring this horticultural inventiveness, but the clearest link between Dash’s artistic practice and the garden itself is found in Madoo’s physical structures. Arbours, fences, chairs, a cadre of benches set on rolling wheels and a crowning central gazebo are painted in vibrant, if sometimes jarring, shades of mauve, citron and azure that mirror the paint-by-numbers feel of Dash’s artworks. These features bounce off hues found inside the artist’s two prismatic living quarters on the property; house and garden bleed together.
For a place that bills itself as decidedly American, there’s a shocking amount of European influence to be found, most noticeably in the fairly detailed account of Dash’s friendship with, and reverence for, British garden grande dame Rosemary Verey. But elements like a Pompeiian-style terrace and Persian rill aren’t so much derivative as they are reimaginings, not unlike the artist Henry Taylor’s recent reinterpretations of several works by Picasso. If the germinating idea isn’t entirely novel, it is, after all, still art.
To learn more about Robert Dash visit madoo.org
A version of this article appears in the October 2026 issue of ‘The World of Interiors’. Learn about our subscription offers.
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