Film captures extraordinary garden and its gardener
Frank Cabot’s creation in Quebec holds a surprise around every corner
WATERLOO — When Sébastien Chabot and his husband went for a stroll though the Quebec garden of Frank Cabot, he had no idea that this garden and its creator would consume his imagination for the next decade.
“It takes three hours to go around,” said the Quebec filmmaker. “I thought ‘this place is amazing but nobody knows about it.’”
Chabot set out to change all that and over the course of several years, he was given unprecedented access to the garden and he conducted interviews with the garden’s creator, Frank Cabot.
“The Gardener,” showing at the original Princess cinema in Waterloo until Thursday, has been a hit with audiences and critics alike after opening in 2016.
“I feel very fortunate,” said Chabot. “Every time we have an opening, it’s a full house.”
Known as “Les Quatre Vents” the 15-hectare garden is the creation of the American venture capitalist and self-taught horticulturalist on his family’s private Cap l’Aigle, Quebec estate. Cabot created and took care of the garden for more than 50 years and after he died at age 86 in 2011, the garden’s upkeep was passed onto professional horticulturists.
Chabot said the filmmaking process was a long one, starting with a visit Cabot in 2007 followed by an official request to film the documentary two years later. PBS was interested in the project; high profile support that would inspire any filmmaker.
A gardener himself, albeit on a tiny slice of yard in Montreal, Chabot said the sheer scale and beauty of Cabot’s garden was what inspired the film. Then there was Cabot, himself, son of a wealthy and very old Boston family.
Cabot was a high profile financier who regularly escaped from his New York City office for his Canadian estate where he would spend his time in dirty smudged pants and gum boots, his nails blackened by dirt.
He had inherited the property from his maternal grandmother in 1965 and the garden he created was inspired by gardens around the world; India, England, Japan and Wales. He regularly travelled to these places to purchase rare seeds such as blue poppies which are “very hard to grow,” according to Chabot.
Though he was Americanborn, Cabot was made an honorary member of the Order of Canada and a chevalier in l’Ordre national du Québec.
What makes the garden unique is the element of surprise around every corner, said Chabot.
“And there’s always more and more,” he said. “It portrays the emotional component.” Chabot also tried to capture the sensuality of the space and he had fun with the garden’s quirkiness and oddities such as an arched tower that straddles a garden path and houses a tea room and a guest room. There are also rope bridges and Asiatic-style temples “that took eight years to build.”
Every inch of the garden was created with a lot of deliberate planning and having unrestrained access to the garden and Cabot gave the film a richness that would be hard to duplicate.
“He was really generous with me,” said Chabot, remembering their four hours of conversation over the course of many months. “He had told me he was dying, he had pulmonary disease.”
The garden was about more than just a beautiful refuge for Cabot who spent most of his working life in the cutthroat and often ugly business of high finance.
Chabot said, “He wanted to prove he could do good.”