Years ago, I was an editor at Martha Stewart Living when Todd Carr was hired as a senior garden editor. I remember asking a colleague what she knew about him, and she responded, “He’s, like, a real gardener”—as opposed to the rest of us, presumably, who could write or edit gardening stories but were generally more comfortable playing with words than playing in the dirt.
Todd, a garden designer and certified Master Gardener, proved to be a great asset, producing some beautiful stories for the magazine. When he left the editorial world, I wasn’t surprised. Print journalism was just too two-dimensional for his ideas-generating energy; he needed the real world as a creative outlet.
I’ve been following his next venture, a botanical shop, on Instagram since it opened in 2017, and what he and his partner, Carter Harrington, have been able to create is just breathtaking. Short for “horticulture and pottery,” Hort and Pott, located in Oak Hill, New York, carries foraged wreaths, botanical arrangements, cement leaves, and sculpted containers, all dreamed up, designed, and made by the couple.
Just as charming is their own house and garden, “a short walk down the creek-lined road” from their store, says Todd. The two decided to move to the Catskills permanently after they vacationed there and “fell in love with the area and the rich abundance of plant life and gardening possibilities.”
Here’s what Todd and Carter’s garden looks like at the height of summer, that is, in full bloom.
Photography by Todd Carr, courtesy of Hort and Pott.
For more upstate New York gardens we love, see:
- Garden Visit: A Cook’s Garden in Upstate New York
- Evening Light: A Painter’s Serene Summer Garden in Upstate New York
- Outbuilding of the Week: A ‘Secret Room’ in Upstate New York
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