The International Garden Festival is the leading contemporary garden festival in North America. Since its inception in 2000, more than 150 gardens have been exhibited at Grand-Métis and as extra-mural projects in Canada and around the world. Presented at Reford Gardens/Les Jardins de Métis, at the gateway to the Gaspé Peninsula, the Festival is held on a site adjacent to the historic gardens created by Elsie Reford, thereby establishing a bridge between history and modernity, and a dialogue between conservation, tradition and innovation. Each year the Festival exhibits conceptual gardens created by more than seventy architects, landscape architects and designers from various disciplines in a pristine environment on the banks of the St. Lawrence River.
Five new gardens of the 2016 edition of the Festival were selected by the jury from 203 projects submitted from 31 countries for the annual competition. LE CAVEAU by Christian Poules, architect and landscape architect from Basle, Switzerland, is a complex construction made of stone gabions that support a levitating green platform. CYCLOPS by Craig Chapple, architect from Phoenix (Arizona), USA, is gargantuan cone 8 metres in diameter suspended over the forest floor. The MAISON DE JACQUES by Romy Brosseau, Rosemarie Faille-Faubert, Émilie Gagné-Loranger, architectural interns from Quebec City (Québec) Canada, provides a happy home to a forest of beans where children can play hide-and-seek in one of many secret gardens. In TiiLT by SRCW [Sean Radford, architect, Chris Wiebe, designer], Winnipeg (Manitoba) Canada, 24 tents populate a space like a school of fish or a flock of birds. CARBONE by Coache Lacaille Paysagistes (Maxime Coache, landscape architect, Victor Lacaille, landscape architect and Luc Dallanora, landscape architect) from Nantes, France, offers a charred tree trunk, capturing carbon during its entire life and contributing to the renaissance of the forest.
A special mention was made by the jury to DRESS UP! by Ran Hwang, artist, Sangmok Kim, architect, Sungwoo Kim, architect, Shin Hee Park, fashion designers from Seoul, South Korea / Beijing, China / New York, USA. The garden will be presented at special events throughout the summer.
These new installations create new experiences and environments to add to those of past editions. Visitors can explore the environment and experience the joy of moving mature trees along a hidden rail in I LIKE TO MOVE IT or admire the movement created by the wind from within the black and white bands of LINE GARDEN. The pure white walls of COURTESY OF NATURE reveal the hidden artistic genius of nature while SE MOUILLER (LA BELLE ÉCHAPPÉE) invites visitors to don a pair of colourful rubber boots to muck it up for themselves among the floating aquatic plants. The whistling white ribbons in LE BON ARBRE AU BON ENDROIT link a forest of hydro poles to teach about planting the right tree in the right place and provide a welcome perch to a resident flock of turkey vultures who have adopted them for their morning outing.
A sixth new garden, DRESS UP!, will be on view as a participatory event throughout the summer where visitors become the garden by donning one of colourful capes. Special events include the annual fundraising dinner in aid of the Festival in the potager on August 5 and a series of events to launch Experimenting Landscapes Testing the Limits of the Garden, a new book by Emily Waugh on the Festival to be published by Birkhäuser in September.
A special mention was made by the jury to DRESS UP! by Ran Hwang, artist, Sangmok Kim, architect, Sungwoo Kim, architect, Shin Hee Park, fashion designers from Seoul, South Korea / Beijing, China / New York, USA. The garden will be presented at special events throughout the summer.
These new installations create new experiences and environments to add to those of past editions. Visitors can explore the environment and experience the joy of moving mature trees along a hidden rail in I LIKE TO MOVE IT or admire the movement created by the wind from within the black and white bands of LINE GARDEN. The pure white walls of COURTESY OF NATURE reveal the hidden artistic genius of nature while SE MOUILLER (LA BELLE ÉCHAPPÉE) invites visitors to don a pair of colourful rubber boots to muck it up for themselves among the floating aquatic plants. The whistling white ribbons in LE BON ARBRE AU BON ENDROIT link a forest of hydro poles to teach about planting the right tree in the right place and provide a welcome perch to a resident flock of turkey vultures who have adopted them for their morning outing.
A sixth new garden, DRESS UP!, will be on view as a participatory event throughout the summer where visitors become the garden by donning one of colourful capes. Special events include the annual fundraising dinner in aid of the Festival in the potager on August 5 and a series of events to launch Experimenting Landscapes Testing the Limits of the Garden, a new book by Emily Waugh on the Festival to be published by Birkhäuser in September.
