Inspiring and educating San Francisco South Bay and Peninsula plant enthusiasts since 1963
UPCOMING SPEAKERS & EVENTS
Join us for monthly Western Hort programs designed to inform, educate and inspire the dedicated plant lover.
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Meetings are held 9 times a year on the second Wednesday of the month and feature a lecture and slide presentation by a guest horticultural specialist. Each program also includes a member-led discussion and photos of unusual plants.
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In-person meetings, will be held at the Garden House in Shoup Park, 400 University Ave, Los Altos.
Located near Lincoln Ave.
In-person meetings often include a sale of diverse plant varieties donated by members and local nurseries as well as books, seeds, tools and other horticultural items on occasion. The meetings are free for members, non-member attendees are $10. All are welcome!
Our Upcoming May Meeting will be In-Person in the Garden House at Shoup Park .
400 University Ave., Los Altos.
If you enjoy the talks given at our meetings and want to help the Western Horticultural Society sustain our program, you might like to sponsor one of our speakers! Your donation helps cover the costs of hosting a speaker and we will note your name as sponsor in our newsletter. You can choose the month or speaker of your choice or perhaps you have a speaker you would like to propose? Contact Leslie Dean lesliekdean@sonic.net about donations or questions.
May 14th, 2025, 6.30pm
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Movie Night: The Gardener
by filmmaker Sébastien Chabot
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This documentary directed by Sebastien Chabot is about Frank Cabot and how he gave birth to one of the greatest gardens in the world. Les Quatre Vents is a private garden nestled in the rolling hills of Quebec’s Charlevoix region, Canada.
Succulent lovers in the Bay Area are well aware of the magnificent Ruth Bancroft Gardens in Walnut Creek. Many of us also know that it is part of the Garden Conservancy. But did you know that it was the very first garden saved by the Garden Conservancy, and that Frank Cabot was inspired by the Bancroft garden to create the organization as a means to save the garden?
Frank Cabot was no stranger to magnificent gardens. According to his obituary, he was instrumental
in the creation (or rescue) of three world-famous gardens beyond the RBG. Born in 1925,
Cabot spent his life involved with plants, horticulture and Gardens with a capital “G”.
Stonecrop Gardens (63 acres) in Cold Spring; a sixteenth-century garden in Cartmarthenshire,
Wales and most famous of all, Les Quatre Vents (20 acres) in La Malbaie, Quebec.
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Les Quatre Vents and Frank Cabot himself are the subjects of the film The Gardener. Filmmaker Sébastien Chabot visited Le Quatre Vents in 2007 and almost immediately decided that he wanted to make a film in order to share “the beauty, the perfection of the place” with the world.
Chabot was able to interview Cabot in 2009, shortly before Cabot’s passing in 2011, but it took four more years of visiting Les Quatre Vents for Chabot to be satisfied that he’d filmed “every plant at the perfect timing.”
According to The Gardener website, the film “…looks back at this remarkable man’s personal story and the artistic philosophy that gave birth to one of the greatest gardens in the world.”