Where did the year go? While living in “magazine time” is always disorienting—I’m working on our spring issue as I write this editor’s note in November for the winter issue—the past 12 months have been a blur of interviews, photo shoots, and endless deadlines; the time marked with the publication of each quarterly issue. I recall living in Los Angeles years ago and missing the seasonal changes so acutely, I found myself driving down the few streets lined with deciduous trees so I would have a small—very small—sense of autumn. When you’re living on “the Coast,” life’s a beach every day, week in, week out, and, while it was beautiful, the views were always the same. After two season-less years, I packed up and moved cross-country to New York.
Last spring, photographer Andre Baranowski told me that he had been shooting a garden for more than a year—would I perhaps be interested in featuring it in the magazine? Would I ever! Turn to “A Garden for All Seasons” for a visit to Southlawn, a glorious Scarsdale estate that delights all year long, celebrating each season with nature itself as the central figure: same landscape, four different looks. I’d be hard-pressed to choose a favorite.
This issue also announces the winners of our Third Annual Westchester Home Design Contest. Our panel of judges from the New York School of Interior Design selected 16 projects out of nearly 200 submissions—and we think you’ll agree that these are examples of some of the finest work we’ve showcased in the magazine. We hope it will inspire even more designers and architects to enter our next contest, which will be upon us almost before you know it. No, not just because of the time-warp factor; this year, we decided to bump up the deadline to June from September and will feature the winners in our fall issue. It seems designers would rather spend their summers working on their golf game rather than contest submissions, and, you know what? We agreed.
Happy reading—and New Year. I hope you fully enjoy each and every season in it.