15th International Garden Festival

Courtesy of Nature, Anouk Vogel & Johan Selbing - Netherlands Photo credit: JC&L Hurni; Source: v2com

The International Garden Festival is recognized as one of the most important events of its kind in North America and one of the leading annual garden festivals in the world. Since 2000, more than 900,000 visitors have explored 110 gardens created by over 220 designers from 15 countries. The Festival is a unique forum for innovation and experimentation and an exceptional showcase and launching pad for participating designers from a host of disciplines. It provides an annual rendez-vous for admirers of contemporary gardens and design as well as offering a unique space for those involved in the renewal of this art form. This artistic and tourism event also gives visitors a chance to discover inspiring spaces bringing together the visual arts, architecture, design, landscape and the environment. The Festival site is articulated around two perpendicular axes. The north-south axis is defined by a geometric grid of identical rectangular spaces that are 10m x 20m. They are separated from each other by a filter of trees (birch, ash, maple and linden) underplanted with ground covers. The west-east axis consists of a series of garden rooms that are variable in size and of irregular configurations. The site is bordered to the north by the St. Lawrence River, to the west by a woodland of deciduous trees, to the east by a large field and conifer forest. On occasion, gardens are installed on other parts of the Festival site and in the historic gardens. The Festival has fostered the creation of similar events across Canada, Paysages éphémères” on Avenue Mont-Royal in Montréal, the Jardins éphémères during the 400th anniversary of Quebec City in 2008 and “Landscape of Celebration” on Olympic Plaza in Calgary in 2010. The media coverage of the event has been impressive since the start. The Festival offers designers with an opportunity to see their gardens published around the world in magazines and specialized web sites. More than 1,000 designers from thirty countries have participated in the past two calls for proposals. Since 2010, the Festival has featured “invited cities” to illustrate the creative cultures present in the world’s cities. Berlin was the invited city in 2010 and New York was featured in 2011. The Fondation des Jardins de Métis, responsible for the presentation of the event, was awarded the Hector-Fabre prize in 2007 by the Ministère des Relations internationales du Québec for its contribution to the promotion of the region internationally. refordgardens.com