Three of the village's most beloved destinations sit within a mile of each other on Frost Mill Road, and for two days in October they are all open at the same time. Most residents visit them as if they were separate outings, in separate seasons, for separate reasons.
They are not separate. Shu Swamp, the Mill Neck Manor campus, and the Humes Japanese Stroll Garden are three visible pieces of a single protected watershed, and the second weekend of October is the narrow window when a Mill Neck resident can walk all three in one weekend without driving more than a few minutes between them. That is the thesis of this post, and the rest of it is a case for planning your October around it.
The road they all share
If you have lived here any length of time you already know Frost Mill Road as the shortcut between Oyster Bay and Locust Valley. What is easier to miss is that the woods on either side of it are not incidental. In 2017, the North Shore Land Alliance purchased the Humes garden from the Humes family, completing a conservation corridor that stretches over 150 contiguous acres in the middle of the Beaver Brook watershed and links the Stroll Garden and Humes property to Shu Swamp Preserve, Upper Francis Pond Preserve and the two Francis Ponds. The apple festival campus sits on the same watershed, and the streams you cross without noticing are all headed the same place. The freshwater streams that run through Shu Swamp flow toward Beaver Lake, through Beaver Dam, into Mill Neck Creek, and out to Oyster Bay.
Once you see the road that way, the weekend plans itself.
Saturday morning, Shu Swamp before the festival crowds arrive
Start early at 28 Frost Mill Road. Shu Swamp, from the old Dutch word Sheogh meaning "cascading waters," is a wooded wetland of towering Tulip trees, Red Maples and Tupelos, fed by many springs and seeps, with Beaver Brook running through it, home to Brook trout, Sticklebacks and the rare American Brook Lamprey. The preserve has two loops, the trails read easily, and the whole thing takes about an hour if you are not stopping to look at things, which you will be.
Two practical notes worth committing to memory:
- The preserve is on Frost Mill Road adjacent to the LIRR tracks and operates Saturday through Thursday, closed Fridays, opening at 8:00 a.m.
- No loud noise, radios, pets of any kind, camping, food or drink are allowed in the park.
The no-pets rule is the one that catches neighbors off guard. If you are a dog household, plan the swamp for an early solo walk and leave the dog for the festival, which also asks visitors to leave pets at home.
The tallest tulip tree in New York State stands here, which is the kind of fact that means more when you are looking straight up at it in October light than it does on a page.
Saturday afternoon, the Apple Festival at Sefton Manor
From the Shu Swamp lot, the entrance to the Mill Neck Manor campus is a short drive north on the same road. For sixty-nine years the Apple Festival has brought Long Island families together to celebrate fall, and this October 11 and 12 the weekend returns with fresh apples, Karl Ehmer specialty meats, gourmet cheeses, baked goods, jams, fudge, strudel, and more than fifty local vendors offering handmade crafts, apparel, woodworking, and jewelry. Hours are 9 AM to 4 PM both days at 40 Frost Mill Road.
A few things about the setting are worth knowing before you go, because they change what the day feels like. Mill Neck Manor is a Tudor Revival mansion set on an 86-acre estate overlooking Long Island Sound; the house was once called Sefton Manor and belonged to Robert Leftwich Dodge and his wife, the cosmetics heiress Lillian Sefton Dodge, before Lutheran Friends of the Deaf purchased the property in 1949 and formed the campus that stands today. When you park in a field and walk past the manor toward the food tents, you are walking across an intact Gold Coast estate that has been quietly running a Deaf school on its grounds since the year Truman was inaugurated.
Tim Charon, chief operating officer of Mill Neck, calls it their biggest fundraiser of the year, with proceeds going directly to the mission, which includes a kindergarten through 12th grade school for deaf and hard-of-hearing students and an adult program. The school currently serves 110 students from 32 districts across Long Island and New York City, and the adult services program reaches thousands more, offering job training, community habilitation and volunteer opportunities. The money you spend on cider donuts moves through a very specific set of doors on the same 86 acres.
There is also a story unfolding under your feet. The festival's origins trace back to the 1950s, when the estate's groundskeeper oversaw a 600-tree apple orchard and greenhouses on the property, and produce and apples grown on-site were sold during October weekends to help maintain the manor, evolving into the festival today. That orchard is coming back. Mill Neck recently planted 120 new apple trees, and the new orchard, featuring multiple apple varieties, is expected to begin producing by 2026. If you have been coming to this festival for years, this is the first fall where the youngest trees will start showing what they can do.
Sunday, the Humes Stroll Garden before it closes for the year
Sunday is for Dogwood Lane. The Humes Japanese Stroll Garden is walking distance from the festival grounds and shares the same watershed, but it is a different order of experience. The garden is a seven-acre Japanese garden in Mill Neck providing a retreat for passive recreation and contemplation, begun in 1960 after John Portner Humes, a lawyer then ambassador, returned from a trip to Kyoto. Of special interest are the winding stepping-stone walkways and gravel paths, stone lanterns, bamboo groves, a waterfall emptying into a koi pond, Japanese maples and other Japanese trees, and more than eleven species of moss. The Japanese maples are the reason to go in mid-October rather than mid-July.
The window is genuinely short. The garden is open May 1st through October 31st, weekends only, Saturday 10 to 2 and Sunday 1 to 5. If you skip the second weekend of the month you are down to two remaining Sundays before it closes until spring. The Saturday of the festival is not a realistic Humes day for most people. Sunday is.
Go for the maples, but linger for the built things. The tea house, restored by master craftsman Peter Wechsler thanks to a grant from the Peggy N. and Roger G. Gerry Charitable Trust, is named Chikufuan, Japanese for "bamboo wind tea house." Late-season quiet is the correct light for it.
One tip that comes up in reviews more often than it should: the entrance is not obvious. Look for the small sign on Dogwood Lane and the modest gravel lot. If you find yourself second-guessing whether you are on someone's driveway, you are probably in the right place.
The station you keep driving past
A small detail worth pointing out because your out-of-town guests will ask about the building near the tracks. Mill Neck is a former rail station along the Oyster Bay Branch of the Long Island Rail Road, located between Oyster Bay and Locust Valley stations, and the historic former station depot now houses Mill Neck's village hall, post office, and police substation. The two-story brick and stone building was rebuilt in 1912 east of Mill Neck Road and north of the tracks, designed by Harrie Lindeberg at a cost of $26,950, funded by local residents and later given to the railroad. A Lindeberg building doing municipal duty is a very Mill Neck thing to drive past on your way to the apple festival.
Why this weekend, specifically
Any given weekend in October, you could pick one of these three places and have a good day. What makes the second weekend of the month unusual is the overlap. The festival runs both days. Shu Swamp is open both days. The Humes garden is open on the Sunday. And the year the Chikufuan roof closes on October 31 is the same year the first fruit is expected from the replanted orchard next door. The pieces are all present, at once, on the same road, in a way they will not be again until next fall.
For residents, this is the practical version of the case for the Beaver Brook conservation corridor. The three destinations exist as one landscape because a set of specific decisions kept them one landscape. The North Shore Land Alliance made the last of those decisions in 2017. The weekend of October 11 and 12 is what that decision looks like in use.
If you have owned your home here a long time, you already know most of this. If you moved in during the last few years, treat this as the guided version of a walk you will end up taking on your own eventually.
Either way, the trees are only going to look like this for about two more weeks.
When it is time to think about the next chapter of your Mill Neck story, whether that means staying put in a home worth stewarding well or considering what comes next, Cottie Maxwell offers senior-level, discreet guidance grounded in the same North Shore streets these three landmarks share. Schedule a private consultation with Cottie.
