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review

The Gardener is a documentary directed by Sebastien Chabot about Frank Cabot's Les Quatre Vents, aka Cabot Garden, a magnificent private garden in the Charlevoix region near Quebec City.

If spring is best greeted in a garden, Sébastien Chabot's delightful documentary on Frank Cabot's world-famous English-style spread of green and flowers might be the best thing you'll come across all May.

"I see visiting a garden as an emotional and sensual experience, as well as something that is filled with surprise," says the film's subject, the horticulturist Cabot. "The good [visitors] look at things quietly and drink them in." You could enjoy The Gardener in that same lovely way. Cabot's meticulously and ambitiously designed Les Quatre Vents in bucolic Quebec is the star attraction, but Luc St. Pierre's score is magical and the interviewees are in their best chatty grooves.

Listen to the British garden writer Penelope Hobhouse – she is exactly as you would want a Penelope Hobhouse to be – describe the wealthy American Cabot as a near-genius and maybe even a little mad. He believed in the joy of discovery and while one could read up on Cabot's private 20-acre summer estate before watching the film, that would only ruin the surprise of this cinematically exquisite stroll.

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