For Sag Harbor resident Lilee Fell, florals, and the eye it takes to artfully arrange them, are familial.
Growing up on the North Shore, near Stony Brook, both her mother and grandmother were involved in garden clubs and floral design competitions, two activities Fell would herself take part in later in life. “My grandmother was on the altar guild, which generally meant that she was one of the ladies that was in charge of the flowers they put on the altar for Sunday mass,” Fell says. “My mother was in a competition where she had to do an arrangement that reflects a Cole Porter song to be shown on a pedestal, 42 inches high, 12 inches wide, to be seen in the round. Isn’t that crazy? That’s the kind of stuff I grew up watching her do.”
Fell came to the Hamptons in the late 80s, working summers at the historic Carwytham dairy farm in Bridgehampton (which is now Two Trees). Returning the following summer, she got a nannying job and worked for a woman who did a lot of entertaining outdoors in her vast garden space. Seeing and working in her employer’s gardens inspired Fell to start a garden of her own. Well, one for her mother, as a birthday gift.
“And then began the fascination,” she says. “I watched that grow and was like ‘well, how do the cut flowers grow in real life?’ That’s what people kind of want to know.”
Lilee Fell Flowers specializes in professional floral design. (Photos courtesy of Lilee Fell)
Fast forward to today, and Fell’s client list includes at least three private country clubs dotted around the East End as well as about half a dozen private homeowners for whom she regularly makes flower arrangements and helps manage garden spaces, working with some for almost 30 years. For over a decade, Fell’s business, Lilee Fell Flowers, operated out of a commercial space on Lumber Lane in Bridgehampton. Today, she works out of her Sag Harbor property, where she’s been able to use daffodils, leucojum, lilac and viburnum from her own at-home (and ever changing) garden for past bouquets.
Flowers she uses come from all over the world. Working with mainly two wholesale flower purveyors, “I prefer to get them in from the Netherlands, Israel and South Africa, because they’re more controlling of what they spray,” she notes.
A member of the Garden Club of America‘s East Hampton chapter, Fell took first place back in 2020 for her arrangement at the Philadelphia Flower Show, which is the largest and oldest indoor event of its kind, drawing in more than a quarter of a million people each year.
Equally impressive to the quality of her work is the quantity, as her arrangements can range from a handful of bouquets for someone’s home, to creating hundreds of arrangements for a swanky outdoor private event. Well-known throughout the community, she’s arranged nearly a dozen boxes filled with 250 hydrangeas each for the Hamptons Classic. This past December she led a wreath-making class at the Madoo Conservancy in Sagaponack. “You think of what works and what you need to make it work,” she says. “With flower arranging, you end up really considering how the flower behaves.”
Inside Fell’s work studio in Sag Harbor. (Photos by Emily Toy)
Lately, her innate enthusiasm for all things horticultural has crept into the political arena with Fell traveling this past weekend to Washington D.C. with her Garden Club of America colleagues for their national affairs legislation, spending the day with environmental speakers. “We go up to The Hill and listen to senators and congressmen speak about environmental initiatives,” she says.
In her own garden, Fell is hyper aware of how important it is to let the natural world be. By letting nature do its thing in her own yard she’s already noticing a difference as we shift into the spring season. “Stuff just comes up,” she says, pointing to a small bunch of sprouting Muscari. “Owls and night animals, predators, things like that, it’s all making a difference. There are bugs that are sleeping right now that I didn’t even realize. A lady bug will hide and lay their eggs in the stem of a dead flower. Like, who knew?”
So, if you’re looking to get your garden growing this spring, there are two simple things Fell advises for you to do: visit as many local public gardens and garden centers for inspiration as you can, and plant things that bring you joy.
“I think you should plant whatever makes you happy,” she says. “Follow the directions, try and get it kind of right. But just get what makes you happy.”
