Garden Diaries: ‘Giving Back to the Land Has Always Been My Dream' – Why Summer Rayne Oakes Traded City Gardening for a Wild, Limitless Homestead
Out in Finger Lakes, New York, Summer Rayne never tires of giving back to the land through rewilded landscapes
When Summer Rayne Oakes, better known as Homestead Brooklyn to her followers, was given the chance to trade her small New York City apartment for a 90-acre plot in the breathtaking Finger Lakes, she couldn’t say no. The influencer and author spent nearly two decades nurturing an indoor jungle of over 1,000 houseplants. But, she finally felt ready to grow beyond her four walls – little did she realize just how much she needed a breath of fresh air.
Over the past five years, Summer Rayne and two friends have gently reawakened the land that is now known as Flock Finger Lakes. Formerly a plant nursery, they found it unusually barren upon arrival, not even a bird in sight. Now its sweeping meadows welcome wildlife to reclaim the land, while Summer Rayne dabbles in designing the curated garden spaces of the homestead.
It Was Time For a Change
I bought this place with my two friends, Sander and Joey. That might seem like an unusual arrangement to some, but it's the best decision I've made.
Really, I don't think I would have done it otherwise. I almost lost the dream of owning land while I was in the city because it's the type of place that reels you in and it can be hard to leave.
In a way, I think my houseplants reminded me to get outdoors because they brought me so much joy. I just wanted a garden that feels like stepping into a Monet painting.
That's why I knew pretty quickly that Finger Lakes is where I wanted to be. It's a beautiful geological region of New York with 11 lakes, stunning waterfalls, and various different types of land, from mountainous to agricultural.
We came to view the property and put an offer in the same day. Five years later, we've made it our own and it continues to grow. We live here, we work here, it's the place we can call ours.
I grew up surrounded by farmland in Northeastern Pennsylvania and I've always loved being out in nature. I actually have an education in environmental science, so working on regenerative projects like this has always been a dream of mine.
This land was previously a plant nursery. Sadly a lot of the horticultural infrastructures, like the greenhouses, were sold by the time we got here. But, we did inherit lots of wells, buildings, and barns which we're renovating.
The owner of the nursery unfortunately fell ill, so the land was essentially left alone for a couple of years. Nature truly took over in that time while the property awaited a new caretaker. Then we arrived.
Flock Finger Lakes is 90 acres, though we currently only manage about 25 which is split into different spaces: a native insect meadow, the orchard, a bulb lawn, a half lake, and various gardens.
There's no doubt the development has been far more expansive than just growing plants indoors, which I did for the best part of 20 years in Brooklyn. Yet, I'm still worried I'm going to somehow run out of space because there's so much I want to do here.
Part of me wishes that we got a piece of land with mature planting, so we could enjoy the fruits of the previous owner's labor.
Instead, we've been forced to start everything from scratch. I've come to accept it takes time for things to fruit and it takes time for a tree to have some growth, so I'm just enjoying the journey.
I'm constantly amazed at how much the garden puts on each year.
Nurturing the Land Back to Life
Being an ecologist by training, I'm really a systems thinker.
Seeing plants rise to the occasion, as far as being a food source or cover for wildlife, rehabilitating the land, and changing the landscape has been the most rewarding experience.
The land was managed as a container nursery, so it was devoid of a lot of native plants and had a lot of accumulated rubbish in the form of old tiles, metal, and geotextiles. From just nine acres we removed nearly 96 tonnes of trash and thousands of invasive honeysuckle and multiflora rose.
This space is now home to a native insect meadow, one of my favorite parts of the garden.
There are over 80 different types of native (and some non-native) plants here that provide vital food sources for pollinators and beneficial insects. In turn, this helps feed birds like bobolinks and orioles.
I really value interactions with wildlife, which is obviously not something you get indoors. Before even prioritizing growing our own food in our garden, I wanted to make sure there was food for the birds and insects so they would return.
That's definitely my main reason for doing this.
Some of the ornamental grasses in the meadow include panicgrass, blue grama, and purpletop grass.
As for blooms, we have echinacea, Liatris, Joe-Pye weeds, and daisies, among others.
It's all about managing your expectations and accepting that sometimes plants don't end up where you plan for them to go.
Take lupines, for example. An expert told me they wouldn't perform well here but now they're everywhere, probably because there's a lot of stone in the soil creating drainage.
After all, a lot of wildflowers thrive in poor soil quality.
It's amazing to see. The plants never fail to surprise me, they just grow where they want to grow.
Creating New Spaces
While I view the meadow as a wildscape full of (mainly) native plants, I like to do some experimentation elsewhere in the garden. I just love getting out there and creating spaces that didn't exist before.
The shade garden is one of my favorites because it was the first real garden that I put in. In a way, it's an homage to the man who owned the nursery.
It's a tiny garden where he planted a Norway spruce, a Japanese maple called 'Tamukeyama', and a weeping white pine.
I decided to extend the path because the trees started to take over. Then, I planted this very diverse, rich underlayer of spring ephemerals.
Foam flowers, trillium, twinleaf, native and non-native geraniums all create the most beautiful ground cover. There are probably 70 or 80 different types of plants underneath that little area.
It taught me so much about what can actually grow in shade, and I personally think it looks good all year round – though May and June are definitely when it looks best.
I'm pretty proud of how we transformed the lawn space. We planted 80,000 bulbs in the fall of 2021 and 2022, and now that it's been a few years, the bulbs have naturalized and spread so it's fairly low-maintenance.
This is one of the most important spaces for early nectar sources for pollinators, with the earliest blooms including snowdrops, winter aconite, muscari, fritillaries, and crocus.
As long as we're not buried beneath snow (which sometimes goes on until May here), these flowers create a colorful living carpet as soon as February.
It's definitely about striking a balance between working with nature and curating the garden to my taste.
I love that I don't have to do much around the ponds, for example. Our one pond is very naturalistic and we let the edges go a little hairy, so to speak.
Before, this area was mowed and maintained routinely. Now we're almost 'unmowing' it and letting nature do its thing.
It's just a different management technique, but resulted in a super abundant area. I recently planted some plugs of native swamp mallow and they took off straight away.
I'm Not Scared to Fail
One of the biggest lessons I've learned here has come from Tulipa sylvestris, or woodland tulip.
It ended up being one of my favorite bulbs we planted with vibrant yellow flowers, but after a couple of years it became super rhizomatous. This essentially means it's still there but only sends up foliage and doesn't always flower.
It taught me not to rush on decisions. If I took the time to do more research, I could have chosen something more reliable for color every year.
I like to do these mini experiments, though. I'm not afraid to learn from them.
I get to play with things in the garden and see how they turn out. I just kind of put a plant where I think it should go and start a garden from there.
Well, to a certain extent. I do have to consult my partners when it comes to bigger trees and shrubs. I once planted an American chestnut right in the middle of a path because it had perfect light – they weren't too happy about it.
This carefree approach is quite liberating, even when it fails.
The Future of the Flock
I don't think our homestead will ever be 'done.' There are so many things I still want to do.
Right now we're working on the six garden spaces by the Meadow House. They're all different shapes and need time to fill out, so I'm plugging in lots of plants.
We have a deer fence to stop it all being wiped out, which has also given us vertical garden space.
I plan to have clematis and roses, alongside the hops and an amazing 'Kintzley's Ghost' native honeysuckle that's already climbing. I even have raspberries that I'm training up the fence.
I love the coreopsis, native anemones, and achillea growing here, and I'm also planning to add some dahlias and more of the big showy blooms.
I'm working on a hummingbird garden, too, with lots of red and purple flowers, including gladiolus.
Really, because this part of the homestead is facing the road, I see it as being more than just our garden – hopefully it's something beautiful for others to look at as they pass by.
Another long-term plan is for Flock Finger Lakes to host both creative and garden residencies. It's the idea that people can come and spend some time in nature to do their work, or work with us, on a specific project.
We've created a regenerative space here and it's energizing to be in. I would love to share that with others.
I actually still have my apartment in Brooklyn, but it's kind of an afterthought.
That's mainly because I love being at the homestead. I also have ducks and chickens, so I can't leave them. But I really do feel most at home here because every day is different.
I love getting up in the morning and seeing how the shade garden has changed, how another inch has grown. It all just happens so quickly. If I leave even for a couple of days, I miss something bursting into life.
This place has quite literally expanded my horizons. I've gone from being restricted to indoor growing to now working on a continually evolving homestead Sander, Joey, and I can call our own.
And there's still so much more to look forward to.
In a way I've returned to my environmental science roots, but it's a less rigorous, more organic kind of study. I'm just living on the land, observing, and seeing what there is to discover next.
Flock Finger Lakes document the development of their homestead on YouTube. You can also keep up to date with Summer Rayne @homesteadbrooklyn on Instagram.
Garden Diaries is our series where we share inspiring stories of designing and cultivating a stunning garden space. We explore how creatives, designers and tastemakers have grown a deeply personal space, inviting creativity, learning and happiness in their gardens, and how they live in these spaces.
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