Outdoor Living in Manhasset, NY
Planning a deck, patio, or pergola for a Manhasset home? Every project starts with a visit to the property. Call the Manhasset line or request a site assessment to arrange one.
- One team from design to installation
- Village review submissions prepared
- Site visit before any scope
Backyard Paradiso designs and installs outdoor living projects across Manhasset, New York. The work covers pergolas, decks, patios and walkways, outdoor kitchens, turf, and lighting, fitted to a hamlet where nearly three-quarters of the homes were built before 1960: the Strathmore neighborhoods, the streets around Plandome Road and the station, and the six villages that surround the hamlet.
Manhasset sits within the North Shore Long Island market on the Markets We Serve roster. It is a hamlet of the Town of North Hempstead, not an incorporated village. Its settlement records reach back to 1643, and it grew from the dairy and oyster-farming country of old Cow Neck into a railroad suburb. Today the hamlet holds about 2,900 housing units (2024 ACS five-year estimates), and most of its outdoor projects are additions to houses that have stood for generations.
Why Backyard Paradiso in Manhasset
The Backyard Paradiso team is a full-service Manhasset contractor. Design and installation stay with one team, so a pergola, the patio beneath it, the turf, and the lighting are sequenced as a single job instead of passing between trades. For properties inside one of the surrounding villages, the architectural review submission is prepared and carried as part of the project. Site assessments scheduled by appointment.
Services in Manhasset
Every Backyard Paradiso category applies here. Outdoor structures, meaning pergolas, decks, awnings, screens, railings, and fencing, often go onto houses that were never designed with an outdoor room in mind. Turf, hardscape, and landscape work covers patios, walkways, and synthetic lawn. Outdoor entertaining brings kitchens, fireplaces, and umbrellas, alongside pools and recreation and seasonal and specialty work that includes permanent and holiday lighting.
Outdoor Structures
Pergolas, decks, awnings, railings, fencing
Turf, Hardscape and Landscape
Patios, walkways, turf, landscape lighting
Outdoor Entertaining
Kitchens, fireplaces, umbrellas, furniture
Pools and Recreation
Pool series and training cages
Seasonal and Specialty
Permanent and holiday lighting
How a Manhasset project starts
1. Call or request a visit
Use the Manhasset line or the site assessment form. Assessments are scheduled by appointment.
2. Site assessment at the property
The lot, the house, and which village or town review applies to the address.
3. Design concept and scope
A concept and scope written for that property, with phasing that fits the calendar.
What Manhasset's conditions mean for a project
Manhasset sits at the head of Manhasset Bay, in a North Shore climate of humid summers, coastal storms that arrive with wind-driven rain, and winters that freeze and thaw again and again. Installations are detailed for all of it:
- Footings for pergolas, decks, and fences go below the regional frost line.
- Aluminum structures are specified to the wind ratings that apply on this coast.
- On bay-side properties, hardware and fasteners are chosen for corrosion resistance.
- Patio bases are built to drain, so trapped water can’t heave the surface through a freeze.
The corridor-wide code values are on the North Shore Long Island market page.
Manhasset’s own complication is jurisdiction. The hamlet itself falls under the Town of North Hempstead’s Building Department. Around it sit six incorporated villages with their own governments, and several run their own architectural review: Munsey Park’s Building Advisory Committee and the architectural review boards of Plandome Heights and North Hills. A Manhasset mailing address doesn’t settle which authority applies, since North Hills, for one, uses Manhasset as a postal name.
Other local bodies apply across the board. Contractor licensing runs through Nassau County. Water comes from the Manhasset-Lakeville Water District, which publishes its own lawn-irrigation rules. A small number of properties carry historic designations, among them the Onderdonk House and sites in the Valley Road Historic District. Flood-zone status is checked on homes near the bay. Each of these is confirmed for the specific property during scoping.
Manhasset's housing stock
Manhasset’s median home construction year is 1942, and nearly half of its housing units date from 1939 or earlier. Adding the 1940s and 1950s brings the pre-1960 share to 73.4 percent (2024 ACS five-year estimates, B25035 and B25034). Detached single-family homes make up 71.8 percent of units, with attached homes and small multi-unit buildings accounting for the rest (B25024). Huntington, the other Backyard Paradiso service area on this stretch of the North Shore, reads differently on the same measures: its median year is 1956, its largest building era is the 1950s rather than the prewar years, and 81.2 percent of its units are detached.
That age sets the kind of work. Almost every Manhasset project is a retrofit:
- a composite deck replacing a tired wood one
- a pergola extending the living space off an older house
- a paver patio set into a yard laid out long before anyone planned for an outdoor kitchen
North Strathmore, subdivided in the 1930s from a former farm north of Northern Boulevard, is one of the established districts where this work happens.
Neighborhoods and the villages around them
Inside the hamlet, the named neighborhoods include Bayview, Manhasset Park, Norgate, North Strathmore, South Strathmore, Strathmore Village, Strathmore-Vanderbilt, Shorehaven, Spinney Hill, and Terrace Manor. Many keep their own civic associations under the Council of Greater Manhasset Civic Associations.
Greater Manhasset also takes in six separately incorporated villages: Munsey Park, Plandome, Plandome Heights, Plandome Manor, Flower Hill, and North Hills. The named communities inside them belong to their village, not the hamlet, whatever the name suggests. Gracewood and Manhasset Crest are in North Hills; Manhasset Cove and Chester Hill are in Plandome Heights. In North Hills, a homeowners or condominium association approval can sit alongside village review. The Backyard Paradiso team works through whichever layers apply and prepares those submissions within project scope.
Getting oriented: Plandome Road to the bay
Plandome Road is the hamlet’s center, running north from Northern Boulevard past the Long Island Rail Road station, and it doubles as Manhasset’s outdoor gathering place. Summer brings the Manhasset Al Fresco events, with the road closed to cars. Autumn brings Halloween on Plandome. Each spring, the Earth Day cleanup sets out from Mary Jane Davies Green, the gazebo park opposite Town Hall.
Northern Boulevard (Route 25A) crosses the hamlet east to west. Whitney Pond Park wraps its pond with paths, courts, picnic areas, and a community pool. Manhasset Valley Park pairs stream-side walking trails and fields with the Town’s 9/11 Memorial. Manhasset Bay reaches the hamlet’s northwest edge on its way to Long Island Sound. Just outside the hamlet, in Plandome Manor, Leeds Pond Preserve keeps a wooded valley of trails around its pond. Where a property backs onto one of the valley parks or looks toward the water, the design treats that view as part of the yard.
Planning a Manhasset project
Each project begins with a visit to the property. The visit covers:
- the lot and the house as they stand
- which government and review boards the address actually falls under
- flood-zone status on bay-side parcels
- what the homeowner wants the space to do
- a phasing plan that fits the calendar
On a house built before the war, the visit also covers what the original structure will and won’t support. The result is a design concept and scope for that property.
Backyard Paradiso — the Manhasset team
Phone: (516) 344-3725
Hours: By appointment
Email: [email protected]
Serving: Manhasset neighborhoods including North Strathmore, South Strathmore, Strathmore Village, Strathmore-Vanderbilt, Norgate, Shorehaven, Bayview, and Manhasset Park, and the villages of Munsey Park, Plandome, Plandome Heights, Plandome Manor, Flower Hill, and North Hills