Anniversary Program Unveiled

The Reford Gardens International Garden Festival will present its 25th edition from June 22 to October 6, 2024, on the theme The Ecology of Possibility.

Photo credit: Principal

Discussion Days - Unfolding Possibilities

The 25th edition will kick off with the entertaining and thought-provoking Discussion Day. The first conference-type event organized by the Festival since 2001, Discussion Days will take place over the Fête Nationale / Saint-Jean-Baptiste holiday weekend in Grand-Métis. This interdisciplinary event will bring together professionals, experts, students, the 2024 designers, and members of the general public. More than just a series of lectures, Discussion Days are ultimately about creating a safe space to share ideas and challenge preconceptions about the built environment, the cultural landscape, and biodiversity. The keynote will be given by Chantal Colleu-Dumond, Executive and Artistic Director of the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire and its Festival International des Jardins. Consult the Discussion Days program here.

Special Onsite Project

Pergola / Jérôme Lapierre Architecte

The International Garden Festival asked Jérôme Lapierre Architecte to design a small pavilion to mark its main entrance. Pergola, which will be inaugurated on June 22, offers a contemporary reimagining of the small garden structure traditionally used to provide shade and support for climbing plants. Made of thin walls of interwoven red oak slats, Pergola seeks to celebrate and showcase the play of light and shadow in the surrounding gardens, creating a filter that reveals the true beauty of the site.

Photo credit: Jérôme Lapierre Architecte

Pergola, 2024
Photo credit: Jérôme Lapierre Architecte

Pergola, 2024
Photo credit: Jérôme Lapierre Architecte

Pergola, 2024
Photo credit: Jérôme Lapierre Architecte

Photo credit: Jérôme Lapierre Architecte

Bruissement d’ailes / Festival International des Jardins of the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire (Bernard Chapuis and Georges Vafias)

The culmination of a bilateral agreement between France and Québec, the Bruissement d’ailes garden highlights the need to get back to basics, to be as close as possible to our natural environment. Climate change and the destruction of natural habitats—these are the new conditions that the world’s temperate zones are now facing. Fragility, imbalance, and uncertainty are now the order of the day, requiring each and every one of us to adapt to a changing climate by doing everything possible to temper the harmful effects of rising temperatures, by rethinking our behaviour, by battling heat islands, and by using new or traditional ways to address the problem of water and shade scarcity.

New Gardens—International Call for Proposals

This year, Artistic Director Ève De Garie-Lamanque invited designers to imagine the future of the garden. Four projects were selected amongst the 216 submitted (from 30 countries)

• Couleur Nature (Vanderveken, Architecture + Paysage | Saint-Lambert, Québec, Canada)
• FUTURE DRIFTS (Julia Lines Wilson | United States)
• Rue Liereman / Organ Man Street (Pioniersplanters | Belgium)
• Superstrata (mat-on | Italy)

The Reford Gardens International Garden Festival

Created at the turn of the new millennium by Marie-Josée Lacroix, Denis Lemieux, Philippe Poullaouec-Gonidec, and Alexander Reford, the International Garden Festival is recognized as one of the most important contemporary garden festivals in North America. Since its inception in 2000, more than 180 contemporary gardens have been exhibited at Grand-Métis, and as extramural projects in Canada and around the world. Presented at Les Jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens, 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 over 20 conceptual gardens created by more than 70 architects, landscape architects, and designers from various disciplines. Over the years, the Festival has received numerous distinctions, including the prestigious Hector-Fabre Award (2007), given out every two years by the Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie to an organization that has contributed to the international renown of its region.