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Re: [GWL]: for garden design aficionados only

The rest of you, just skip this msg because it does go on:

    I'm currently reading Frank Cabot's The Greater Perfection, an account
of his fabulous Quebec garden. It is most definitely a coffee table book
worth reading, esp. if you are interested in garden design or have visited
the garden.

    I have never been able to put into words exactly why I hate designing
perennial gardens (though I spend much time thinking about this, designing
my own, and trying to teach other people the rudiments). Now I have it,
courtesy Mr. Cabot: "Gardening involves so many other appealing things (such
as pruning espaliers or dividing primulas) devoid of the mental anguish that
composing a perennial border entails, and where one's judgements and tastes
aren't so blatantly exposed." Mental anguish, that's it! Every time. He
feels mental anguish too -- I'm so relieved.

    He tells a very funny story of having Russell Page to the garden for a
consultation:

    "Russell Page stayed at Les Quatre Vents for two nights and one long,
exhausting day, which reduced me to a nervous wreck. Every hour of daylight
was devoted to touring, examining and discussing every element.... I was
privileged to have the eminent author of The Education of a Gardener giving
me the most intensive one-day individually tutored crash-course in garden
design. By the end of it I was considering taking up my unfortunate game of
golf once again as a less threatening avocation.....

    Looking at any vista, especially if it led down to the water's edge,
where there were plantings that intervened: 'Get rid of that fuzz!' Looking
at many of the elements I had grown up with: 'What possessed them to do
that?'"

    Reflecting on the day, Cabot writes: "It was a wonderful, practical
seminar in some of the basics of garden design and although it was
thoroughly gruelling I just wish it had lasted longer, for every forceful
point has become part of my frame of reference. Today there is no fuzz
anywhere."

    And imagine: Page never sent a bill. Cabot sent him a cheque to cover
his travel expenses and asked him to forward his fee, but Page simply
thanked him for covering the expenses. He died some months later (at the
time he'd been working on the famous PepsiCo sculpture garden).

    Anyway, the joy of this book is that Cabot writes beautifully, and,
though his garden is rarified, he is at heart a real hands-on gardener.

Yvonne Cunnington, Ancaster, Ont.

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