ART APPRECIATION

For collectors Jen Rubio and Stewart Butterfield, a historic Hamptons house with interiors by Jake Arnold is the perfect canvas

- DEREK C. BLASBERG

STEWART BUTTERFIELD AND JEN RUBIO WITH SON OLIVER AND DAUGHTER FRANCESCA IN THE GARDEN OF THEI SOUTHAMPTON RETREA

When the Canadian-born, New York-based tech entrepreneur Stewart Butterfield left Salesforce, which in 2021 had acquired Slack, the revolutionary workplace-messaging platform that he cofounded, his farewell email teased a new hobby. “Can I tell you something?” he wrote.

“Everyone thought he was joking—but here we are!” says Jen Rubio, Butterfield’s wife, and a cofounder of Away, the sleek direct-to-consumer luggage brand. Less than five years later, the couple’s expansive Southampton gardens now include vegetables, herbs, berries, and allées of fruit trees, not to mention 1,000 shrubs and more than 5,000 perennials.

“Stewart brings in ripe vegetables every day, and we plan our meals around whatever he’s pulled. He pickles things and sends jars to friends! The garden is really Stewart's happy place. It grounds him, quite literally.”

The couple purchased their summer home (main base is in New York’s West Village) in 2022. Designed by architect Grosvenor Atterbury, the house was built in the 1910s and, true to its era, is expansively scaled with an imposing exterior of swell belly bricks.