Gardens Where Design And Architecture Blend With Nature

Nature, architecture and design combine in interactive and immersive natural spaces at the International Garden Festival which takes places every year at the Reford Gardens or Les Jardins de Métis, in Québec, Canada. The leading contemporary garden festival in North America and one of the most important festivals of its kind in the world has recently opened its doors for the 17^th edition. Visitors can walk through twenty-six gardens created by landscape architects, designers, visual artists, and architects from nine countries.

The leading contemporary garden festival in North America and one of the most important festivals of its kind in the world has recently opened its doors for the 17^th edition.

This year, six new installations chosen from 203 submitted projects will be on display, with one garden, ‘Dress Up!’, exhibited only at selected events. ‘Le Caveau’ is a meditative space where stone walls house a floating plane. Life, represented by moss and plants growing from fertile earth, is suspended in time. In ‘Carbone’, the cycle of natural growth, industrial development, and regeneration is wonderfully represented through a single tree trunk with a charred surface; the tree is seemingly part of the environment yet altered to illustrate the carbon cycle as well as life, death, and rebirth. The sculptural ‘Cyclops’ invites the viewer inside a huge wooden cone to become a part of the installation. The artwork creates a direct connection between the man-made object, viewer, and the surrounding landscape. ‘La Maison de Jacques’ provides a new take on the classic children’s tale Jack and the Beanstalk. Here, beans grow on a slender wooden frame, dividing the space into separate gardens that will transform as the plants bloom at the end of July. In ‘TiiLT’, twenty-four white tents can be flipped between two orientations, bringing visitors together in an interactive space reminiscent of a flock of birds or white petals. You can explore the gardens until October 2, when this year’s festival ends. Photography by Martin Bond and Louise Tanguay.