SAGAPONACK, N.Y. — There’s a cozy covering the Hamptons. Where once winter here meant broad, moody skies over expanses of bare potato fields, the terrain on Long Island’s moneyed East End suddenly looks as domesticated as tea at the Ritz. Drive anywhere in Southampton, East Hampton, Sagaponack and Water Mill and you find lanes filled with oddly humped shapes of trees, shrubs and hedges bundled in burlap against the cold.

Since late November, landscaping crews throughout the Hamptons have been scrambling to swathe precious greenery against the elements, never mind that the weather a week before Christmas was a balmy 55 degrees. While horticultural experts differ in their views of a practice they consider either essential or largely frivolous, “burlapping” has become ubiquitous, a seasonal display of wealth roughly on par with driving a $200,000 Lamborghini in August through villages where speed limits top out at 35 miles an hour.