Francis Cabot

Francis Higginson Cabot, (August 6, 1925 – November 19, 2011) was an American financier, gardener and horticulturist. He founded The Garden Conservancy in 1989. Early life He was a member of the New York branch of the prominent Cabot family. After WWII service in the United States Army (when he saw Japanese gardens for the first time), Cabot graduated in 1949 from Harvard College, where he was active in Hasty Pudding Theatricals and was one of the four founders of the a cappella singing group, the Harvard Krokodiloes. Career After college, he began constructing a garden on private property in Cold Spring, New York, above the Hudson River, beginning a lifelong passion for horticulture. Cabot was appointed chairman of the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx from 1973 to 1976. In 1989, he founded the nonprofit Garden Conservancy, after noting that two-thirds of America's great gardens had been destroyed by development. The Conservancy began with "four acres of giant cactuses, succulents and native species" in Walnut Creek, California, the life's work of gardener Ruth Bancroft. The organization's Open Days program has opened more than three hundred private gardens to the public throughout the United States and has been active in the preservation of seventeen important private gardens for posterity, including the rehabilitation of the gardens at Alcatraz.