The International Garden Festival opens its 16th edition in the company of more than 50 landscape architects, architects and designers from Canada, the United States, France and Israel. The 2015 Festival is opening 6 new gardens chosen from among the 309 proposals submitted from designers around the world. From June 27 to September 27 2015, visitors are invited to move, touch and smell the gardens and even get their feet wet.

Many of the ephemeral gardens of the 2015 edition are interactive. The goal is to intrigue and excite our visitors with the unknown and the unfamiliar. Trees that move through the landscape, blue flowers that are woven into a pathway or green roundels that shimmer like poplars in the wind. Children, large and small, can don coloured gumboots to traverse a pond and discover what is hidden in its midst.

The new garden installations chosen by the international competition are by designers from Tel Aviv, Paris, Winnipeg and Québec City:

Around-About

by Talmon Biran architecture studio [Roy Talmon & Noa Biran], Tel Aviv, Israel

Unlike the Japanese Zen garden, which is designed to be seen from the outside, this garden will be viewed, created and experienced from the inside, through a joyful and playful activity. As visitors walk away from the roundabouts, their footsteps violate the orderly pattern of the gravel. Once they get back on the roundabouts and spin them, the garden returns to its ordered perfection.

The two architects that form Talmon Biran architecture studio work on architectural projects as well as artist installations and urban interventions. They have a range of experience working with private, public and commercial clients in a variety of typologies and scales – from interior design and building design to urban planning and landscape design. Their work is characterized by a multidisciplinary approach, born of their experiences in visual arts, dance, photography and video.

Carré bleu sur fond blanc

by Kihan Kim & Ophélie Bouvet, Paris, France

A white surface is installed over the garden, which acts as a revealing filter activated by (the) blooming. The vibrating surface of the cordage creates confusion between the immersed or submerged parts of the plants. This creative growing moment goes along with the buzzing bees attracted by the honey plants. The resulting tapestry woven by the flowers will gradually take shape under the eyes of the visitor each days of the Festival.

Kihan Kim was trained in architecture at the Inha in South Korea, then obtained a university master’s degree in landscape architecture at the ETSAB Barcelona. Ophélie Bouvet studied at the École nationale supérieure du paysage de Versailles in France and in ETSAB of Barcelona and in ACE of Edinburgh. Together, they collaborate on many projects and intervene at different scales. Between art, design, gardening, landscape, architecture and territory, their sometimes minimalist and sleek interventions are directly inspired by the site and its peculiarities, offering a poetic look at the space around them. Their approach is often based on the reinterpretation of natural mechanisms as raw material for their creations.

I like to move it

by DIXNEUFCENTQUATREVINGTSIX Architecture [Mathilde Gaudemet & Arthur Ozenne], Paris, France

In this garden, the visitor will face a seemingly wild meadow. Grasses and a few birch trees grow together against the backdrop of dense greenery. There seems to be little going on here. But the straight lines at ground level, punctuating the space, create a rhythm and attract the visitor’s attention. On approaching one turns around, scans, wonders and finally touches. That is when the trees begin to move. Visitors can slide the trees along their tracks and create their own garden. The banal becomes strange. Nature domesticated transforms the landscape into a garden.

DIXNEUFCENTQUATREVINGTSIX Architecture was born from a desire to create contemporary architecture that can be appropriated and understood by all. Considering architectural practice as a real place of experimentation, these architects place as much emphasis on the poetic qualities of a space at its construction. Their practice draws its inspiration from the relationship between the individual and the collective, the particular and the universal, the exceptional and the banal, incorporating the ongoing effort to put people at the heart of their projects.

Popple

by Meaghan Hunter & Suzy Melo, Winnipeg (Manitoba) Canada

This garden is a distillation of the existing site through the use of colorful curtains that mimic the magical sounds and imagery of the trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides). A vertical plane of multi-colored discs dance in the wind, creating a melody and visual buzz indicative of the trembling leaves of the aspen. Visitors are encouraged to interact with the curtains to enhance the movement of the disc leaves. 

Meaghan Hunter holds a Masters in landscape architecture and a degree in environmental design. Her creativity and eclecticism has led her to architecture, urban design and landscape architecture, where ecology, environmental management, engineering and the arts meet. Suzy Melo holds a Masters in landscape architecture and a degree in environmental design. She is interested in the transition between interior and exterior spaces, particularly those heavily defined by built architecture. They are both working for landscape architecture firms in Winnipeg.

Se mouiller (la belle échappée)

by Groupe A / Annexe U [Jean-François Laroche, Rémi Morency, Érick Rivard & Maxime Rousseau], Québec (Québec) Canada

The installation explores the discussion about invasive species and the delicate balance of ecosystems. Here plants will be kept in a kind of vise that visitors will be invited to enter. The plant will escape over the course of the summer. Loss of control? When what is beautiful becomes dangerous.

Groupe A / Annexe U is an architectural firm from Quebec City that hasdeveloped a unique expertise in land management, urban planning and urban design. For the members of this multidisciplinary team, the participation of and interaction with the client and other stakeholders are at the heart of every project. The sensitivity with which they approach each project and their creativity has contributed to the success of the firm, which has garnered them awards and made them finalists in many competitions.

A special invitation was offered to Pete North and his master’s degree students in landscape archiecture at the University of Toronto to create the garden Macro / Micro / Myco : An invitation to be fully enveloped by these enigmatic organisms, the mushrooms, allowing one to experience their delicate and provocative forms. The garden offers the unique experience of traversing scales in which we appreciate the mycelial process: macro, or the vastness of the environment they inhabit and support and micro, or the wonder of these tiny organisms and the intimacy they invoke.

The Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design offers professional graduate programs in architecture, landscape architecture, urban design, and visual studies  — as well as unique undergraduate programs that use architectural studies and visual studies as a lens through which students may pursue a broad, liberal arts-based education. Pete North is a professor at the Daniels Faculty of the University of Toronto. With Alissa North of North Design Office, he created Core Sample for the International Garden Festival in 2006.

The jury was composed of Paula Meijerink, landscape architect, co-designer of Asphalt Garden, IGF 2003 et Shushu, IGF 2004; François Leblanc, architect, co-designer of Méristème, IGF 2014; Rosetta Sarah Elkin, landscape architect and assistant professor of landscape architecture, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, designer of Tiny Taxonomy, IGF 2010-2014; Edith Normandeau, acting executive director, Association des architectes paysagistes du Québec and Alexander Reford, director of Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens and the International Garden Festival.

All of the 309 entries are exhibited on-line on the website of the Festival as part of the annual exhibition of competition entries: http://www.internationalgardenfestival.ca.

About the International Garden Festival

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 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.

The International Garden Festival is presented with the financial assistance of many public and private partners: Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, Canada Summer Jobs, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and Emploi-Québec. 

About the Reford Gardens / Jardins de Métis

A National Historic Site and Québec heritage site, the Reford Gardens / Jardins de Métis are an obligatory stop for all those visiting eastern Québec. Cultural space and tourist destination for over 50 years, the Reford Gardens is one of the most popular attractions in the Gaspésie region, providing visitors with experiences for every sense. Located on the banks of the St. Lawrence and Mitis rivers, they were created between 1926 and 1958 by avid gardener and plant collector, Elsie Reford. Hydro-Québec has been the lead sponsor of the Reford Gardens since 1999. Economic Development Canada is the major partner in the development of the Landscape Laboratory project.

The gardens will be open every day up to September 27, 2015. Children 13 and under are admitted free of charge.