Cold Climate Gardening

I’ve often thought my biggest hindrance to becoming a professional garden designer is my aversion to spending money, mine or anyone else’s. Consequently, I tend to filter out great-but expensive-ideas almost as soon as I’ve thought them, even at the risk of being penny-wise but pound-foolish. So it should surprise no one that I find The Greater Perfection: The Story of the Gardens at Les Quatre Vents mind boggling.

I have no idea of author Francis Cabot’s net worth, nor whether he inherited most of it or single-handedly multiplied the family fortune. All I know is this guy has a lot of moolah, and he knows how to use it, at least from a gardener’s perspective. Les Quatre Vents has been in Cabot’s family for over a century, but he did not start his own work on the gardens until 1975. The estate, which is reckoned in square miles, not acres, would be squarely in USDA Hardiness Zone 3 were it not for the moderating influence of the St. Lawrence River, which is broad enough at that point to be considered an inland sea. Not the type of climate most people would consider ideal for creating a world-class landscape.

I should make that plural: landscapes. Rock gardens, Japanese gardens, woodland, perennial borders, potagers, orchards, magnificent views, intimate spaces–this place has it all. About the only thing missing is polar icecap and steamy jungle, but the rope bridges certainly lend that kind of tropical ambience. Yes, rope bridges. Two of them.

Popularity: 9% [?]