Every spring I fall in love with my garden. This happens on schedule, even if the clean-up chores aren’t finished, chickweed is engulfing the beds and the weed whacker won’t start. When I look out at the clumps of daffodils, all is right with the world.
Spring is also the time of plant sales and garden visits, when every weekend is crowded with horticultural activities and adventures. I can’t stand the thought of missing even a single event, so I start the season by making a master schedule of all the plant sales, garden open days and garden lectures held in late April and early to mid May. I do my yard work in fifteen or twenty minute increments, carving out narrow crevices of time at the beginnings and ends of the weekdays, so that I won’t feel unhappy about leaving my garden on weekends to go and see someone else’s.
Two weeks ago, when it was still unseasonably cold, I got a jump on the spring marathon by making a trek to Greenwood Gardens in Short Hills, New Jersey to attend a lecture by Francis Cabot. This much-honored horticulturist entered the public arena almost two decades ago when he founded the Garden Conservancy, the national non-profit organization dedicated to preserving some of the country’s most interesting and important gardens. Greenwood Gardens is a magnificent early twentieth century estate garden that is currently undergoing restoration with the help of the Conservancy.
But before Frank Cabot created the Conservancy, he developed two great gardens. The first, Stonecrop, in Cold Spring, New York, is now open to the public. The other, Les Quatre Vents in Quebec, is still essentially a private estate garden. Cabot’s book, The Greater Perfection, is the life story of that unique, exquisite landscape. His Greenwood lecture, which distilled the contents of the book, was accompanied by inspiring slides and leavened with the author’s anecdotes and self-effacing humor.
The original gardens at Les Quatres Vents were designed to compliment the house that Cabot’s parents built on the property in 1928, but the land has belonged to Cabot’s wealthy family for over one hundred years. Since 1975, when Frank Cabot took over the property, those gardens have been changed, expanded and augmented with additional garden “rooms”. There are formal layouts based on traditional axial symmetry, an informal meadow garden and a glorious potager or kitchen garden that is as beautiful as it is productive. Water, in the form of pools, small lakes, watercourses and streams, provides movement, sound and a mirrored surface to reflect and complete structures and landscapes. Major buildings include the French-style Pigeonier, a tower patterned on older structures that were used to keep pigeons; and two Japanese-style pavilions, designed and built by a skilled craftsman native to that country. Among the many flower gardens are a white garden, rose garden, a perennial allée and a set of shade borders.
Art abounds at Les Quatres Vents, and not just traditional garden sculpture. In one area, whimsical, human-size copper frogs are posed as “musicians”, complete with instruments, and grouped as if frozen in mid jam session or chamber music recital. Passing visitors activate electronic eyes that trigger musical selections–either jazz or classical–depending on the frog grouping. Cabot has a wonderful photo of English gardening doyenne Penelope Hobhouse sitting on a bench next to the “Philosopher Frog”, another copper creation.
Anyone with enough money can fill spaces with plantings, but Frank Cabot created a garden of disparate pieces that come together because each piece is a spiritual and intellectual expression of its creator. Cabot is an inspired amateur rather than a trained landscape architect, and his unique sensibility is the product of a fine education, a natural intellectual curiosity, a broad perspective honed during years of travel, a passion for plants and a willingness to allow skilled craftsmen the freedom to express themselves. Most of all, Cabot has an abiding love of the land itself–the history, topography, ever-changing vistas and the native plants. Each individual garden on the Canadian property is perfect, but it is Cabot’s singular vision and sense of place that raise Les Quatres Vents to “the greater perfection”.
While Les Quatre Vents is still a private garden, you can enjoy it vicariously by purchasing Cabot’s book, The Greater Perfection (W.W. Norton & Company, 2001), available from either www.bn.com or www.amazon.com. Stonecrop, his first garden, at 81 Stonecrop Lane, Cold Spring, New York 10516, is open to visitors April 1 through October 31. Open days are Monday through Friday, as well as the first and third Saturdays; from 10 AM to 5 PM. Admission is $5.00 per person for a self-guided tour. For further information, go to www.stonecrop.org. Greenwood Gardens, 274 Old Short Hills Road, Short Hills, New Jersey 07078, will host Special Garden Conservancy Open Days on May 20, 2007, 12 PM-4 PM and September 8, 2007, 1 PM-3 PM. Otherwise, guided tours will be offered every Thursday at 2:00 PM. and the first Saturday of each month at 10:00 AM. Reservations are required. Contact Matthew Gundy at 973-258-4026. For further information, go to www.greenwoodgardens.org. To join the Garden Conservancy, go to www.gardenconservancy.org.