Bread Garden

The Greater Perfection

The Greater Perfection, now with a new foreword by Francis H. Cabot’s daughter, tells the story behind the creation of Les Quatre Vents, one of the world’s most breathtaking gardens. Featured in the 2018 film The Gardener, Les Quatre Vents in Charlevoix County, Quebec, has been acclaimed as the most aesthetically satisfying and horticulturally exciting landscape experience in North America. This twenty-acre garden seamlessly combines traditional and novel elements into a splendid composition, adorned with unexpected touches and perfectly compatible with its natural surroundings. The Greater Perfection, first published in 2001, illustrates the delights, diversions, and surprises that await the garden’s visitors. Francis H. Cabot’s account of the challenges he faced in developing Les Quatre Vents reveals the fascinating process behind the creation of a world-class garden that has become a mecca for horticultural enthusiasts around the globe. Winner of the 2003 Annual Literature Award of the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries and featuring stunning full-color images by five leading garden photographers, The Greater Perfection is one of the most beautiful books on gardens to appear in years. This new printing includes a foreword by Marianne Cabot Welch, Cabot’s daughter, that further contextualizes the gardens and explores how a place rooted in the past can confront the future.

Herb Gardening from the Ground Up

Garden-fresh herbs impart flavor and fragrance that dried, packaged products simply can’t. Now, anyone with access to a few square yards of soil (or even a sunny patio or windowsill) can enjoy the punch and pungency that only come from fresh herbs, hand-picked from the garden. Herb Gardening from the Ground Up demonstrates how to design, seed, and nurture 38 culinary herb gardens that are delightful to the eye as well the palate. Designed to supply herbs for a wide range of flavors as well as a pleasing balance of colors, there are gardens to suit every taste and cooking trend, including a French chef’s repertoire, an Italian trattoria’s menu, the aromatic seasonings of Asia, the closer-to-home flavors of American barbecue, and the piquant profiles for a Tex-Mex feast. There are herbs for flavoring fish and game, soups and salads, bread and other baked goods, and, for the mixologists among us, even herbs for the home cocktail bar. Herb Gardening from the Ground Up offers historical insight, provides starting-from-scratch, season-to-season basics for planting in the present, and looks forward to the bright future of urban and suburban growing trends.

The Garden