The Reford Gardens will blossom in
the year 2000 with a creative new event

Site Designers
Garden Designers at the first Edition of the Festival
Bernard Saint-Denis
Lisa Rapoport, Christopher Pommer and Mary Tremain
Jennifer Luce
Bernard Lassus
Marie-Chrystine Landry
Susan Herrington
Patricia Lussier and Anna Radice
Claude Cormier
Jill Billington

Site Designers
A landscape and architecture design competition was held in August 1999 to choose a concept for the overall design of the site; top honours went to Atelier in situ and VLAN paysage. Atelier in situ is composed of architects Geneviève L’Heureux and Stéphane Pratte, and Annie Lebel of Matane; the group distinguished itself with the Grand Prix d’excellence from the Ordre des architectes in 1998 for the recycling of the Zone building in Montréal. For the Métis project, Atelier in situ joined forces with a young team of landscape architects, VLAN paysage, comprised of Micheline Clouard and Julie Saint-Arnault.

Together they designed "an ingenious and persuasive project that presents a strong idea of landscape where space is not based on form but rather on meaning", according to the competition jury consisting of Kurt Forster, Director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal, and Alexander Reford and Philippe Poullaouec-Gonidec, cofounders of the Festival.

Garden Designers at the first Edition of the Festival Festival organizers have chosen nine designers (artists, architects, and landscape architects) from North America and Europe. They will create and produce temporary gardens for this first edition of the Festival - encouraging an exchange of ideas and demonstrating from the start that the Festival international de jardins de Métis is an international and interdisciplinary event. Benefiting from the proximity of the historic gardens created by Elsie Reford, these new gardens will build a bridge between tradition and modernism, furthering the advancement of knowledge and renewal of expressions in the art of the garden.

Following the objectives of the International Garden Festival, landscape architect Bernard Saint-Denis and architect Peter Fianu's garden stimulates our senses: in Living Room, they reveal the paradoxical relationship we have with nature, exemplified most clearly in the backyard garden.

The ever-increasing rapidity of the transformation of our environment is today accompanied by a growing awareness of the ecological challenges presented by unhindered economic growth. Yet even as our lives become increasingly dominated by technology and cyberspace, we see a marked increase in interest in gardening and the search for pristine wilderness.

It is this tension in our relationship with nature that Bernard Saint-Denis and Peter Fianu have made palpable in their philosophical and poetic garden room. To encourage the visitor to ponder this contradiction, they invite the visitor to enter a landscape which is both cultivated and living, between the earth and the sky, but nonetheless linear, geometric and enclosed. This highly artificial environment, constructed of natural materials, caricatures our attempts to return to nature in our domestic gardens. And even if it appears unduly provocative at first glance, the television appears at home in this outdoor room.

The designers

A landscape architect and Associate Professor at the École d'architecture de paysage at the Université de Montréal, Bernard Saint-Denis holds a Master's degree in urban and regional planning. In 1998 he was awarded the Prix d'excellence from the Association des architectes paysagistes du Québec for his landscaping of the Outremont Library in Outrement, Quebec. Peter Fianu is an architect who practises at the Atelier BRAQ in Montreal. In 1998 he produced a master plan for the Mitchikanibikok Inik Algonquin Reserve in La Vérendrye Provincial Park in north-western Quebec.
         

Lisa Rapoport, Christopher Pommer and Mary Tremain Le jardin du repos

From Concept to Reality

For the International Garden Festival, PLANT/BranchPLANT is creating three pieces of site specific furniture which allow the visitor to enjoy their garden and the landscape beyond in different and complimentary ways.

The designers, Lisa Rapoport, Christopher Pommer and Mary Tremain, follow in the tradition of providing definite viewing points in the landscape. Generally reserved for larger scale projects, here they adapt the technique to a domestic scale. Through this sleight of hand, they focus attention on the different sensorial experiences. The garden is to be seen from a variety of viewing positions carefully constructed within the limitations imposed by a relatively confined space.

In the main axis of the garden, in the centre of a long rectangular bed, is a "monumental" stone bed. The visitor is tempted to lay back and look at the blue sky, feel the wind and soak in the sun's rays which dance through the tree-tops of the trees which border the garden. In the north-west corner of the garden sits an over-sized chaise longue nestled against a straw fence created by the designers. The visitor suddenly becomes aware of the garden as it overlooks the water -suspended over a fairly steep slope, with the waves lapping the beach below. On the south side of the site, a semi-circular bench made of round logs offers a secret space for the inquisitive; isolated by a screen from the garden, and camouflaged by the woods on the other side, it provides a viewing point of the access road and the visitors coming and going through the site.

The designers

The three members of PLANT/BranchPLANT have all been educated as architects and work together and independently, in graphic design, design, architecture and landscape architecture. In addition to their participation in the PLANT group, Lisa Rapoport is Associate Professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Waterloo and Christopher Pommer is a designer with Bruce Mau Design in Toronto. Their practice now extends into the United States, including endeavours such as the Meadowlands Project in New Jersey, the transformation of a 20,000 acre industrial site. They are known for the Sweet Farm project, an ecological landscape park which they have been designing since 1993.
   

Jennifer Luce Transfusion From Concept to Reality For her contribution to the inaugural edition of the International Garden Festival, American architect Jennifer Luce renders homage to Elsie Reford, the creator of Reford Gardens. In so doing, she explores the relationship between installation art and the art of the garden. All landscapes are infused with memory because the landscape is an eternal witness to change and the transformations wrought by the passage of time and the changes made by those who have shaped or worked it. In her garden, Jennifer Luce exaggerates this phenomenon to make her point: near to where Elsie Reford herself worked passionately, Luce creates a memorial garden which pays tribute to the life and work of the Garden' s creator. In Transfusion, everything is transposed. At ground-level, salmon-coloured gravel forms a bed. Perched on a forest of metal stakes are pages of Elsie Reford' s garden diary, referring to the landscape that inspired them. Suspended from a network of wires are objects which evoke the two great loves of Elsie Reford' s life at Grand- Métis -fishing for salmon and gardening -and to a turning point in her life. When surgery forced her to abandon fishing, she put aside her first passion for another -the creation of her garden, which we still admire today for its daring, beauty and grandeur. The designer Born in Canada, Jennifer Luce is an architect with a Master's degree in design from Harvard University. After working with Architectonica in Miami, Florida, and with several other firms, she now manages her own firm in San Diego, California, where her accomplishments include projects in the fields of public art, architecture, urban design and the landscape. She has earned several awards over the past fifteen years, including a prize in 1999 from the American Institute of Architects for the Felkner/Lehman loft in San Francisco, California.

Bernard Lassus Adapted reconstructions of two works by Bernard Lassus

Le Jeu de points rouges, 1967
(The Game of Red Dots)
Le Buisson, contraste retardé, 1972
(The Bush)

The Festival's greenhouse pavilions house two works by Bernard Lassus, one of France's most important landscape architects, which have been reconstructed for the Festival. Le Jeu de points rouges (adapted for the Festival as Jeu de points verts or Game of Green Dots) was invented in Paris in 1967 and repeated through the 1980s in Berne, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Oxford, Warsaw and London. This work has symbolic value for the Festival, in the hope that the designers invited for the inaugural edition of the Festival will not only impress, but inspire the visitor's own experience of the garden.

The second work, Le Buisson, contraste retardé, was created in 1972 for the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles de Paris and repeated in 1973 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London. The tall painted branches which protrude from the azalea bushes remind the visitor that a garden is essentially a dialogue between nature and culture. With the presentation of these two works, Bernard Lassus sets the tone for the 2000 edition of the Festival and hints at the themes of the garden he is designing for the second edition of the Festival in 2001.

The designer

Bernard Lassus, visual artist and former student of the Atelier Fernand Léger, is a landscape architect who works in France and the United States. Recipient of the Grand prix national du Paysage 1996 (France), he is also an associate member of the Conseil général des Ponts et Chaussées and a landscape consultant for the Directeur des Routes. From 1995 to 2000, he was associate professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Among his many built projects is the Parc de la Corderie Royale in Rochefort-sur-mer for which he received France's Grand Prix national du Patrimoine from the ministère de la Culture. In 1998, a major retrospective of his work, The Landscape Approach, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

The International Garden Festival is giving sculptor Marie-Chrystine Landry the perfect opportunity to pursue her work on the landscape. As in previous work, she has systematically explored the themes of the border, the transposition of work into a new environment, and the creation of hybrid locations, at once local and foreign. The site in which she has created her work is a kind of launching ramp which has been reduced to fit into a dense forest, providing a wonderful opportunity to undertake a collage of contrasting plants and foliage.

To introduce the viewer into such a rich dialogue, the artist has chosen to base her creation on an element of the maritime culture which resonates with meaning. The SOS distress signal, familiar to everyone, also has specific meaning in this area, given the history of navigation on the St. Lawrence and the maritime disasters which have marked its history.

In its purest form, her idea proves very suggestive. On a perfectly manicured lawn, the Morse code signal -S - 0 -S is spelled in artemesia and junipers. Aligned in rows, the plants double the rhythm, 3 long, 3 short, 3 long; pause; 3 long.. .Her ability at collage is apparent with Marie-Chrystine Landry's use of the loading ramp for the garden's equipment to create an inclined surface. The shrubs which are aligned diagonally and the sounds of the sea seem to fall into the garden from the forest cover above.

But this distress signal might well come from the forest or beckon to the sea. The work of Marie-Chrystine Landry cannot be reduced to one reading only. Moreover, the overtly graphic component of the Jardin des appels -particularly the plants which are used to create a repetitive motif on the same theme, in addition to the miniature landscape derived from the Tuscan landscape, opens countless artistic opportunities. Her work initiates a reflection on the relationship between the art of the garden and the plastic arts.

The designer

A native of Quebec's Lower St. Lawrence region, Marie-Chrystine Landry earned her Master's degree in visual arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal. Since 1985 she has participated in several group and individual exhibitions. She has been commissioned to do a number of public art projects as part of Quebec's program to incorporate art and public architecture. Represented by Montreal's Galerie Graff, she has recently put on an exhibition " la lecture des viscères ou l'émotion comme fétiche."
 

Susan Herrington Pré et marée

From Concept to Reality

Susan Herrington, a professor of landscape architecture at the University of British Columbia, has responded to the invitation of the International Garden Festival by creating a narrative on the history of gardens, plant exploration and the senses.

The site, with its slight opening onto the St. Lawrence, inspired Herrington to explore, in a manner horticulturists will appreciate, a key time in the history of gardening: the expeditions organized to collect exotic plants for European gardens. At the turn of the twentieth century, new species were still being discovered and were sent back to nurseries and botanical gardens on board ships. The newly introduced plants sometimes naturalized and have became as commonplace as native plants in our gardens and landscapes.

To highlight this process, Susan Herrington created two distinct spaces in her long and thin garden, entitled Surf and Turf. On the surf side, closest to the river, exotic plants are placed in pots, methodically, as if they have only just been removed from the deck of a ship. At the opposite end, the turf side, an identical number of the same varieties and species are intermingled with native plants arranged in traditional beds. Between the two spaces are vertical panels, covered in grass, which pivot from the centre, separating the two worlds as if to allow the plants time to acclimatize. Once the visitor moves through this moving barrier, other senses are stimulated. The fragrance of freshly-cut herbs overwhelms the smell of the sea, and when one moves in the opposite direction, the garden gives way to views of the river and the sounds of the surf.

The designer

Susan Herrington is a landscape architect who earned her Master' s degree in landscape architecture from Harvard University. While she continues to practice in the United States, mainly in California, she has recently become Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia' s School of Landscape Architecture. Her research and work focus primarily on gardens designed for children. In 1997 she was one of five finalists in the international competition to design a memorial for the Oklahoma City Bombing.
 

Patricia Lussier and Anna Radice Not in my Backyard From Concept to Reality Patricia Lussier and Anna Radice, two young landscape designers who together make up L'espace DRAR, have used the International Garden Festival as an opportunity to raise recycling into an art form. With Not in my Backyard, they have created a playful and poetic garden in which nothing is lost but everything is transformed. In an era when consumerism and consumption produces mountains of garbage, the idea of building a small backyard garden creates an opportunity to make art out of ecology. The result shows the visitor that just as nature recycles everything, so can a garden. Bands of grass alternate with recycled glass. These strips evoke the order of a garden, the lapping of the waves of the nearby sea, and the garbage that it often carries. Washed up on the beach after having been discarded, glass bottles become a colourful carpet, catching the sun and crackling under foot. Metal fencing, one of the most basic garden materials, finds a new purpose: unfurled on the ground, the fencing becomes a runner, creating beauty out of banality. Elsewhere the fencing serves as garden seats. Other common objects are brought to a new light through their imagination: galvanized steel containers are transformed into treasure troves, receptacles of fragrance, colour, and surprises... The designers Both members of L'espace DRAR trained as landscape architects. They work as interns in private practice. They have participated in different international competitions and events, including an internship at the Conservatoire international des parcs et jardins de Chaumont-sur-Loire in France. Anna Radice is the recipient of the Frederick Law Olmsted Bursary from the Université de Montréal. Together they received a mention during the charrette of the Canadian Centre of Architecture in 1998 for their project, "Surface pour quatre saisons".

Claude Cormier Le jardin de bâtons bleus

From Concept to Reality

As part of the International Garden Festival, landscape architect Claude Cormier presents a radical take on the traditional English mixed border.

With the intent of creating a truly contemporary work within the context of the historic gardens next door, Claude Cormier has taken as his inspiration Elsie Reford's Long Walk. Elsie Reford laid out the Long Walk in the style of the justly famous garden designer of the early part of the twentieth-century, Gertrude Jekyll. Lush perennials are accentuated against the backdrop of a stone wall and a row of lilacs, accentuating the view and creating a remarkable sense of depth.

Using the same grammar, the allée, the colour palette and the varying heights of perennials, Claude Cormier's Blue Stick Garden nonetheless uses a very different vocabulary. Instead of flowers, Cormier has employed stakes which have been painted blue and are planted in tight rows to achieve a monochrome effect. Although these blue sticks are radically different from Elsie Reford's walk, there are similarities. The colour is reminiscent of the Himalayan Blue Poppy, which has been successfully grown at the Gardens and is now its floral emblem. Everything in Claude Cormier' s garden follows the same attitude; referential but also transcended by his imagination. To visit Cormier's garden is a unique sensory experience, one in which the visitor experiences the allée, the maze, the dead-end and the U-turn. The varying height of each stick in turn modifies the perception of the garden and its environment as one walks through it.

The designer

Claude Cormier is a landscape architect with a Master's degree in design from Harvard University. Well-known for his adventurous designs, he has previously worked with Martha Schwartz in the United States. He bas been in charge of practical training for the School of Landscape Architecture at the Université de Montréal since 1992. He oversees the gardens of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. He was the winner of a competition, in collaboration with the Cardinal Hardy Group, to re-design Place d' Youville in Montreal.
 

Among the sites available for the first edition of the International Garden Festival is this clearing. British garden designer Jill Billington has created a subtle encounter between the cultivated garden and nature.

With her design, Jill Billington explores what clearings and gardens have in common. A clearing is created by taming the environment through the dint of sheer hard work. But a clearing remains precarious. It is constantly being threatened by the encroaching forest. Similarly, the garden is forever at risk of being overrun by nature if it is not maintained.

It is this temporary transformation of a plot of land into a garden or the forest into a clearing that this garden highlights. Around the site, she has planted tree trunks denuded of their bark. These trees provide a limit to the space while establishing a continuity between the clearing and the surrounding natural environment. At the entrance, a labyrinth is created, with the posts of varying heights laid out in a seemingly random fashion. Rather than creating a frontier with the neighbouring forest, they create a mediating space which is both natural and artificial. Once inside the garden, the visitor encounters flowerbeds and other trees, these ones having been felled, a tribute to the constant labour that both gardens and clearings require.

The designer

A sculptor by training, a teacher of garden design, and a well-known author, Jill Billington has won prizes at the Chelsea Flower Show and the Glasgow National Garden Festival. She is a member of the Royal Horticultural Society and frequently serves on juries at major garden events in the United Kingdom. She was written many books, including Very Small Gardens and The Most Beautiful Combinations of Plants.
 

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