Landscape Pleasures

The first buds of spring are just beginning to show themselves, but the Parrish Art Museum has already set in motion its plans for this year's 1997 Landscape Pleasures garden event.

This weekend, benefactors for this annual event and members of the Landscape Pleasures garden committee will attend a literary tea at Maria and Peter Matthiessen's Sagaponack house.

Mrs. Matthiessen co-chairs the garden commitee. Her husband is among the authors invited to read excerpts from their work that point to the pleasures of the garden. He will be joined by the art critic and best-selling author Robert Hughes of Shelter Island, the garden writers Mac Griswold of Sag Harbor and Eithne Clark of England, Anne Raver of Brooklyn, a New York Times columnist and author, and the artist Robert Dash, whose Saga ponack garden has been a frequent stop on the Landscape Pleasures garden tours.

Saturday's tea will run be from 3 to 5 p.m.

Benefactor tickets for the Landscape Pleasures weekend are $750 and can be purchased through the museum's offices in Southampton. This year's Landscape Pleasures weekend will be on June 14 and 15 and will include a keynote address by Dan Kiley, one of the best-known landscape architects in the world, a cocktail party, a garden tour, and a container garden competition open to nurseries, florists, and landscape designers on the East End.