The garden designers have been announced by the International Garden Festival for its 21st edition.

The International Garden Festival is the most important contemporary garden festival in North America. The Festival held its 20th anniversary edition in 2019. Since it began in 2000 to celebrate the new millennium, more than 1 million visitors have explored the Festival gardens and been inspired by the more than 200 projects that have been exhibited. 

Presented at Les Jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens at the gateway to the Gaspésie region, the Festival is a laboratory for innovation and a giant outdoor playground for creators. The Festival provides a unique dialogue between the past and the present and an ongoing conservation of innovation, tradition and conservation. Architects, landscape architects, visual artists and designers contribute to expanding the horizons of the garden and to the ongoing reinvention of this unique shoreline environment along the St. Lawrence River. 

Five new projects have been selected from different parts of the world for the 21st edition of the International Garden Festival 2020. The designers of these projects are from South Korea, France, Montreal and Toronto.

The new gardens will be on exhibit from Saturday, June 20th to October 4th 2020 at Le Jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens . The 21st edition of International Garden Festival has more than 25 gardens for the visitors. This new garden design are unique and each one pushing the frontiers of contemporary design and presenting an unprecedented blend of curated environments, natural experiences, horticultural staging and human creativity.

The theme for the 21st edition is Métissages. The environment and culture from around the world  with hybrids of colours and textures from marine life are offered by the new installations. Continuing the exploration of new ideas and emerging practices, the Festival connects designers from various fields to favour the crossbreeding of disciplines to offer visitors explorations of new territories.

Cross-breeding in the context of contemporary gardens can be of practices (landscape architecture, garden design, architecture, visual arts, industrial design, cuisine and other fields of creative expression), plants (native or exotic) and materials (natural and manufactured). This mixity of approaches enriches and energizes, generating fresh opportunities for exploration.

FIVE NEW GARDENS                
Following an international call for proposals, 200 projects were submitted by designers from 38 countries. The Five projects chosen by the jury for the new gardens are as follows:
Augmented Grounds
Corps de resonance
ENTWINE
Forêt corallienne
(Mé)Tissages
 
AUGMENTED GROUNDS
Augmented grounds are designed by Architect Soomeen Hahm, Architect Jaeheon Jung, and Landscape Architect Yumi Lee, from Seoul (South Korea). Augmented Grounds is inspired by the traditional sash of the Métis nation of the Western Plains. The Métis sash is made with the art of finger weaving. Representing harmony through colorful ropes that are laid tightly on top of the sculpted terrain, contours created with bubble like geometry which represents the depth of Métis culture. The garden is made possible by using smart construction technology that uses augmented reality for its layout and installation.
 
CORPS DE RÉSONANCE
Corps de resonance is designed by Designer Charlotte Barbeau, Designer Leila Desrosiers,  Environmental Designer  Félix Roy, and Architect  Jean-Benoit Trudelle, from Montreal (Quebec) Canada. Corps de résonance is a musical folly that takes form in a forest glade. Curiously harmonizing with the surrounding landscape, the reflections and the color of the pavilion soften the contrast between the natural context and its artificial materiality. The sequence of extrusions reveal trees and vegetation in vertical bands. This mysterious curved shape calls the most curious to enter and discover its second nature. Mallets are available to hit against the metal bodies to make them vibrate. Visitors move in and around this giant instrument that comes to life in the playing, vibrating along with the sounds of the forest.
 
ENTWINE
Entwine is designed by Landscape Architects Waiyee Chou, and Carlos Portillo, from Toronto (Ontario) and Montreal (Quebec) Canada. ENTWINE incorporates the ancient knot-tying technique of Macramé to highlight the varieties of plants hybridized for horticulture. Inside a spiral, visitors are free to wander between suspended vessels and become entwined with the structure’s cords.
 
 FORÊT CORALLIENNE
Forêt corallienne is designed by Architect Lucie Bulot and Architect Dylan Collins from Montreal (Quebec) Canada. Forêt corallienne is a coral forest of a different kind. A community of limestone creatures takes root in the forest, a métissage of colour and form that creates an unusual landscape and a new hybrid world. Visitors will experience the the strangeness  of this chimerical landscape, the unprecedented compatibility of its forms organic and the contrast of its colors and textures.
 
(MÉ)TISSAGES
(Mé)Tissages is designed by Architect Duke Truong  from Strasbourg (France). (Mé)Tissages is a woven landscape that invites visitors to enter through layers of elastic elements into a space created by the weaving of various elements. This experimental garden unites visitors through a shared experience of an installation that combines architecture and nature. (Mé)Tissages is also an invitation to question the links between communities. Visitors discover a multiplicity of landscapes that resonate as visitors explore and read between the lines.
Two projects received special mention:
Entre vents et marées
by Emmanuelle Loslier, Landscape Architect and Camille Zaroubi, Landscape Architect
Montreal (Quebec) Canada.
 
Zoétrope métis
by Sami Tannoury, Architect
Montreal (Quebec) Canada