Jardins de Quatre-Vents — Attraction in La Malbaie

After watching a documentary about the garden (called "The Gardener") I was seized by a violent desire to visit. (I live in the US.) I discovered they were only open for 4 days this summer, so when tickets went on sale online I was in front of my computer ready to go 15 minutes before they went online. (Good thing, too, as the tickets sold out that evening.) I arranged for round trip bus transportation from Québec, then waited anxiously for the day to arrive. After the bus dropped me off at the appointed place, I discovered there was no taxi, bus, or other transportation to the gardens, so I hoofed it 2.2 km. (mostly uphill!) to the garden entrance. I missed my scheduled tour time and I'm so glad I did, because I was added to the next tour and met our lovely guide, Anne Girard. She's been a guide here for a long time, and she knew everything about its history. (I was even able to translate for two ladies who didn't speak French.) The gardens more than lived up to my expectations - so amazingly beautiful, with surprises to draw the eye placed all over the grounds. Mr. Cabot has left quite a legacy in this enchanting garden - his grand-daughter now runs the place. Many Canadians are unaware of this gem in their midst - hopefully more will discover it. The tour runs 2 1/2 hours, and parts of the path are a little tricky, but oh, dear lord, what a heavenly place! I highly recommend a day trip from Québec City - absolutely...

Going for the difficult 4 stars here - that's because this place aspires to perfection, and doesn't quite hit it.

Firstly, the experience is great, if you can get the reservation. The guides are superb and they really help you understand the place.

Spoilers below.

The key problem is there is a difference between what it wants to be and what it is. Ultimately it is a 20th century North American garden built by an ever improving gardener that wishes it were by turns French, English, Chinese, Japanese, Swedish and many other things. The credit to the design and execution is that it comes remarkably close to pulling this off, however, the veneer is ultimately just too thin. Personally I found the experience of being under the pigeonnier jarring as (spoiler) it's actually a totally wooden construction designed to look otherwise. Once you start pulling this particular loose end then much of the rest follows. It is an illusion, beautiful at times, but nonetheless it lacks any core substance.

Curiously this leads to it being strongest where it is most accepting of the reality. The house and swimming pool areas (with the showers) are oddly impressive. The sense of humour involved also shines through.

Definitely worth a visit but if you want the real thing you're still going to need to...

Beautiful and well designed and maintained garden. We went in August for the English tour. They have overbooked the year before when they opened their website for reservations and were flooded with requests. So their tours were running back to back. I wish they would have let us roam around some areas freely a little longer but because of the tightness of the schedule around many tours they had to move from one area to the next to free it for the next group.

We still had a wonderful time. Weather was perfect. The Japanese gardens...