Frank Cabot’s Les Quatre Vents: Where Borrowed Beauty Becomes Original Art

May 24, 2018

On this day, the Oakville Horticultural Society outside of Québec unveiled a most delicious treat for the eyes and soul - a screening of the documentary The Gardener.

One could scarcely imagine a more fitting tribute to the legendary Frank Cabot and his masterpiece, Les Quatre Vents.

Dear readers, if you have not yet had the pleasure of witnessing this Eden of horticultural ingenuity, allow me to paint the picture in your mind's garden.

The film, much like Cabot himself, does not merely showcase pretty flowers and manicured hedges. No, it delves into the very essence of why we gardeners toil in the soil, battling elements and pests alike in pursuit of beauty. It examines how the act of cultivation transforms not just land, but the cultivator's very spirit.

Cabot departed this mortal realm at the age of 86, but not before bestowing upon us his philosophy of garden-making. His 20-acre English-style paradise in Quebec stands as a testament to a life devoted to horticultural perfection. Can you imagine?

Over 100 years in the keeping of a single family! Such continuity of vision is increasingly rare in our disposable age.

There exists a rather charming interview between Martha Stewart and our protagonist. In it, Cabot reveals that his celebrated moon bridge was, in fact, a reproduction of one found in China's Seven Star Park. The audacity! The brilliance!

"I'm a great believer in plagiarizing. I think all gardeners are.

There's no reason why one shouldn't plagiarize.

Why not take someone else's good idea and adapted to one's site?

This garden really represents that; it's just Ideas that were gleaned from other sources."

How refreshingly honest!

While the literati and artistes of the world scramble to prove their originality, gardeners have long understood that beauty need not be entirely novel to be authentic. We borrow, adapt, transform - just as nature herself does through endless iterations of the same fundamental patterns.

Les Quatre Vents - The Four Winds - could not be more aptly named. It stands as a crossroads where influences from English, Asian, and North American gardening traditions converge and dance together in harmonious splendor. Is this not the true essence of gardening?

Taking what the winds bring us - seeds, ideas, inspirations - and coaxing them into something uniquely suited to our particular plot of earth?

So the next time you find yourself admiring a feature in another's garden and thinking, "I simply must have that at home," remember Frank Cabot's words.

There is no shame in horticultural appropriation - only in failing to adapt it thoughtfully to your own terrain and climate.

Plagiarize away, dear gardeners, plagiarize away!