Festival | 2009 Edition
June 27 to October 4, 2009
The International Garden Festival began as an idea and a dream. The idea was to celebrate the millennium with a garden festival that offered young and creative designers from around the world an opportunity to create contemporary gardens and exhibit them to a new and inquiring public. We imagined a festival that was participatory rather than corporate, that celebrated excellence in design and that encouraged emerging talent to display their imagination with absolute creative freedom. The dream was to transform Les Jardins de Métis and make the gardens an international destination, known both for the quality of the historic plantings and landscapes created by Elsie Reford as well as for the avant-garde gardens presented every summer.
The first ten editions of the Festival have proven the power of the idea and made the dream a reality. Over the past decade we have presented 80 gardens by over 200 designers. Landscape architects, architects, garden designers, artists, sculptors and graphic designers – they have all contributed to make this one of the world’s leading garden events. They have come from cities across Canada, the United States, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Morocco, Germany, Australia and Switzerland. They have brought their expertise, their creativity and have fashioned some of the most extraordinary gardens to be seen anywhere.
The process begins in October when we launch the annual competition to select designers for the next edition. A jury meets in December to choose the winning teams, this year from a record 127 proposals. Then the designers’ work begins in earnest. Their concept is transformed into plans and drawings and the design is finalized in collaboration with the artistic director. Then the technical coordinator begins his work to bring the garden to life, finding the materials, suppliers and artisans. By the time the snow melts in May, the designers have completed their plans and construction is ready to begin. Our crew of craftsmen, under the watchful eye of technical directors Pierre Tremblay (2000), Yvan Maltais (2001-2007) and François Leblanc (2008 and 2009), begin their work to bring the designs to life. In a short and exhausting construction schedule of just 7 weeks, the gardens are laid out and built.
This year the Festival has a new artistic director, Emmanuelle Vieira. Architect, critic and journalist, she has followed in the footsteps of her predecessors, Lesley Johnstone (2004-2007) and Denis Lemieux (2000-2003) and this year offers our most ambitious program of gardens ever. It is our way of celebrating the first decade of the Festival and renewing our commitment to exhibit cutting-edge projects by emerging designers.
List of garden for the 2009 edition
