The International Garden festival, one of the most recognized showcases for contemporary gardens in North America, has announced the designers for its 18th edition. After an international call for proposals, 162 designs from 30 countries were handed in. The jury, consisting of five landscape architects and urban designers, selected six outstanding proposals for the exhibition. The Canadian festival will be presented from June 23, 2017.
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Exhibition on Banks of Saint Lawrence River
The festival is located in Grand-Metis, approximately 300 kilometres northeast of Quebec City, adjacent to the Saint Lawrence River. Next to the pristine site, the well-known gardens from Elsie Reford can be found, which were created between 1926 and 1958. Therefore, the exhibition establishes a link between history and modernity and creates a dialogue between tradition and innovation. Every year about twenty conceptional gardens, developed by more than 70 landscape architects and designers, can be visited.
Interactive Gardens
A common feature of the six selected gardens is their interactivity. Visitors can not only observe trees and plants, they can also hear, feel and even play with the nature. Through facilities and equipment like movable wagons, swings, climbing walls and playgrounds especially children are addressed by the designers. Other exhibitions have a focus on hearing the natural environment, by having bells or large cones installed. Beside the six winning designs, the jury also gave a special mention to two more purposes.
Further information can be found here!
From 1926 to 1958 Elsie Reford, gardener and plant collector, created Les jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens on the shores of the St. Lawrence and Mitis rivers in Quebec, Canada. The gardens and heritage buildings were designated by the government of Quebec in 2013. But even before then, since 2000, the site has served as a location for the Métis International Garden Festival. With her new publication “Experimenting Landscapes: Testing the Limits of the Garden“, the author Emily Waugh honors site and festival projects.
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For sixteen years the Métis International Garden Festival in Quebec, Canada has attracted more than one million visitors. Since 2000 more than 150 temporary gardens at the cutting edge of garden design and environmental art have been presented. Famous designers such as Diana Balmori, Claude Cormier, Ken Smith, Snøhetta and Topotek 1 experimented with materials, methods, and design concepts. Now, between the 17th and 18th edition of the festival, the new publication “Experimenting Landscapes: Testing the Limits of the Garden“ presents a selection of 25 projects as well as essays by landscape critic Tim Richardson, landscape architect Marc Hallé and comments by festival designers that explore how the garden can challenge our assumptions, provide new meanings, and change how we perceive even the most familiar things.
