Tributes paid to Aberglasney's biggest supporter

Tributes have been paid to the biggest supporter of Aberglasney House and Gardens in the Tywi Valley.
North American financier and horticulturalist Francis H (Frank) Cabot has died at the age of 86.
He was Aberglasney’s most generous supporter.
His contribution was not just financial. As a renowned self-taught horticulturalist, he was an important influence in the design and layout of the gardens.
Frank Cabot’s contribution to Aberglasney’s success was initially only recognised within the historic boundaries of Aberglasney.
But, five years ago, his contribution to Aberglasney and to Carmarthenshire life was recognised by a Fellowship award by Trinity College in Carmarthen.
Gethin Lewis, the chairman of the Aberglasney Restoration Trust said: “All at Aberglasney were immensely saddened to learn of the death of our most generous benefactor and great friend, Frank Cabot.
“He had been fighting pulmonary fibrosis, a relentlessly progressive lung disease, for several years, and passed away peacefully at his home, Les Quatre Vents, near La Malbaie, Quebec, Canada.”
A son of the New York branch of one of Boston’s most famous families, Francis Higginson Cabot Junior was born in Manhattan in 1925.
He served with the US Army occupation forces in Japan at the end of World War Two and became a graduate of Harvard University in 1949.
After a career in investment banking and as a venture capitalist, he retired in 1976 to concentrate on his lifelong interest in gardening.
Mr Cabot developed two world-renowned gardens.
The first was Stonecrop Gardens at Cold Spring, New York. The second was Les Quatre Vents, overlooking the St. Lawrence River at a point where it is 18 miles wide and not far from its mouth.
Mr Lewis said: “Both gardens enjoy worldwide reputations and you can get an idea of the scale of Mr Cabot’s achievements by visiting the ‘virtual reality’ tours on the respective garden websites.
“Frank became involved with the Aberglasney Trust right from its very outset.
“He and his wife Anne were regular visitors. In fact, Mr Cabot never missed a board meeting until about three years ago when his medical condition intervened.
“Together, they have been immensely generous to Aberglasney in purely financial terms.
“Even more than that, Mr Cabot has been an important influence in the design and layout of the gardens and in the planting policy, and was always ready to use his incredible connections at the highest levels in the horticultural world for our benefit – not least in the appointment of Graham Rankin, originally as head gardener.
“A quietly spoken, charming, patrician gentleman, his modest demeanour endeared him to all. Mr Cabot and Anne quickly became firm friends not only to all within Aberglasney but to many in Llandeilo and the surrounding area. He will be greatly missed by us all.
“Mr Cabot is survived by Anne, his son Colin, two daughters, Currie and Marianne, nine grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. We send them all our deepest condolences.”
Mr Lewis added: “As a footnote to Mr Cabot’s life story, it is worth mentioning one story from history. In the 1920s the status of the Cabot family was referred to in the following music-hall song: -

‘And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots
And the Cabots talk only to God.’

The New York Times newspaper published an extensive obituary tribute to Mr Cabot.
The NY Times described Mr Cabot as an extraordinary gardener. The tribute said –
Mr Cabot founded the Garden Conservancy, a non-profit organisation based in Cold Spring, NY, that works to preserve America’s most extraordinary private gardens.
Mr Cabot was a hands-on horticulturalist — the magazine House Beautiful once described him as being “as likely to be wearing dungarees with kneepads strapped on and pruning shears holstered in the back pocket as he is a blazer and bow tie” — who built two extraordinary gardens himself.
The first, Stonecrop Gardens, is in Cold Spring, 55 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, on the property where Mr. Cabot and his wife made their home from the 1950s to the early ’90s. Now open to the public from April to October, Stonecrop features 12 acres of woodlands, grasses, bulbs, alpine plants and rock gardens.
The second, Les Quatre Vents (the Four Winds), is on his family’s estate in La Malbaie, beside the St. Lawrence River. Open four days each summer, it covers more than 20 acres and is widely considered one of the most ambitious private gardens in North America, if not the world.
Mr. Cabot’s book about his cultivation of that garden for decades, “The Greater Perfection: The Story of the Gardens at Les Quatre Vents,” was published in 2001.
He became a gardener, he said afterward, to relieve the pressures of venture capitalism.
“I was a good promoter,” Mr. Cabot told The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky., in 2003. “But I was a good promoter of ventures that didn’t always work out. So I threw myself into gardening.”
In the late 1980s Mr. Cabot, by then a consummate plantsman, visited Ruth Bancroft, renowned in horticultural circles for the “dry garden” — thousands of cactuses, succulents and shrubs — she began in the 1950s on her property in Walnut Creek, Calif.
By the time of his visit, Mrs. Bancroft was in her early 80s. Worried that her garden would die with her, Mr. Cabot founded the Garden Conservancy.
To date, the organisation has helped preserve more than 90 gardens, including those of the Longue Vue House and Gardens in New Orleans, ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, and the gardens of Alcatraz, which were tended by prison inmates and their guards for more than a century.
Mr. Cabot, who retired in 1976, was chairman of the New York Botanical Garden from 1973 to 1976. His other horticultural posts include distinguished adviserships to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, Ontario.
At Les Quatre Vents, after members of the public had navigated its lawns, meadows, streams, hedges and woodlands; traversed its Nepalese rope bridges over lush ravines; admired its riotous floral displays (including 10-foot-high delphiniums and Himalayan blue poppies, no mean feat to coax from North American soil); explored its Japanese garden — and its white garden, rose garden, rock garden, shade garden and kitchen garden; lingered at its reflecting pools, waterfalls and lily ponds; walked round its pavilions, sculptures and topiary; and paused before its massive outdoor oven and ornate, towering “pigeonnier,” as Mr. Cabot’s dovecote is known, they were sometimes surprised, at journey’s end, to encounter Mr. Cabot.
He invariably had a question: Had they found their odyssey emotionally exhausting?
Those brave enough to answer yes were met with a characteristic reply.
“Good,” said Mr. Cabot, genuinely gratified.
Weblinks –
www.aberglasney.org.uk
http://www.stonecrop.org/index_cal_view.php
http://www.etpanorama.com/Cabot_Garden_demo/Cabot_Garden_Intro.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/nyregion/francis-h-cabot-86-extraordinary-gardener-dies.html