Pierre Thibault, in collaboration with Katherine McKinnon and Vadim Siegel
Research & Development in Architecture
Sophie Beaudoin, Marie-Ève Cardinal, Michèle Gauthier
NIP Paysage
BGL
L'espace DRAR
Bernard Lassus
Michel Boulcourt
Dominique Caire

The Métis shoreline, its biological and geological history, recomposed: in an environment covered with tall cultivated plants, architect Pierre Thibault has arranged slices of land lifted from their natural environment, be it living or fossil. Around an imprint recalling the primordial river/sea are set individual shapes, colours, textures and odours of plant and mineral matter from the salt marsh, the tidal flat, the sunken Micmac shore, a furrow of cultivated wheat and virgin forest. This garden-poem is very typical of the practice of Pierre Thibault's team, acclaimed for their sensitivity to the Quebec landscape in their architecture and installations.

Research & Development in Architecture (Richard Davignon, Laura Plosz, Troy Smith) Alberta, Canada Narcissist Narcoses As if systematically lifted from different places in the ultra-uniform Calgary urban environment, a series of narrow strips, perfectly parallel but set off by contrasting undulations and carpeted with different species of grass. All of them, the width of a lawnmower's path, are carefully manicured-all except one, that is, allowed to grow wild so as to illustrate the extent of the upkeep required for the others. Surprise: through this regular alignment of strips of suburban monotony, trainee architects Richard Davignon, Laura Plosz and Troy Smith have created a stimulating garden-landscape that battles the tyranny of tidiness and order with its own weapons.

Here the ubiquitous flat lawn is transformed by an eruption of huge grass-covered prism shapes, leaving enigmatic, angular craters carved into the soil. Three landscape architects from a leading Montreal firm, Groupe Cardinal Hardy, dug deep into the mundane and came up with ways of adding imagination to everyday, everywhere gardens: Sophie Beaudoin, Marie-Ève Cardinal and Michèle Gauthier have devised a sculptural arrangement of mounds and geometrical pits, filled with accumulations of common, utilitarian industrial treasures that create glittering, changing and disturbing effects.

Five young landscape architects, all of them from different parts of the Quebec woods (Abitibi, Gaspé, Lac Saint-Jean, Laurentians) and all of them working in Cambridge, in the United States, offer a playful and aesthetic second take on the modern-day forest. They have set their garden in a clearing, given it a façade of spruces in barrels, and laid out a linear wooden path, criss-crossed with veins of plastic chips above which rise metal structures filled with enigmatic forest containers. Is this an industrial "plant"? A site for mass consumption, genetic engineering or a cultural exhibition? All these are questions that also come to mind when one attempts to define the contemporary forest.

Jasmin Bilodeau, Sébastien Giguère and Nicolas Laverdière, the three young artists who make up the already celebrated BGL group, have created a disturbing garden of home-made inventions on two levels. At the top of the steps is a playful illusion of a tiny garden, consisting of bits of green adhesive tape attached to nylon strings, shimmering and quivering in the breeze and the sunshine. Down at ground level, on the other hand, in the shade of this entertaining synthetic greenery suspended from steel cables between the surrounding trees, is a desolate plant world, an evocation of the chaos left behind after clear-cutting in the forest.

L'espace DRAR (Patricia Lussier , Anna Radice) Québec, Canada Not in my Backyard Patricia Lussier and Anna Radice are two intern landscape architects working together under the L'espace DRAR label, standing for "from dreams to reality." Their garden suggests the opposite path: from reality to dreams, or how to make a tiny backyard giving onto an alley into a functional and poetic personal recycling centre. Recycled glass is transformed into a sparkling bead carpet, galvanized steel tubs become containers for ideas and souvenirs, a trellis of the ugliest variety of metal fencing is unfurled on the ground to sculpt the grass and serve as seats… Here in this garden, imagination supplants consumption. Not in my Backyard was created for the first edition of the Festival, and was held over because of the public interest it generated.

Internationally renowned landscape architect Bernard Lassus started from the premise that visitors should perceive and feel the site just as it is, as much as possible. He has made minimal changes and designed it to limit visitors' impact. There are raised steps so that they can move about without actually touching the ground, leading them to observation and sensing posts on a soft but artificial surface. There visitors can refine their sensory perception of this place, and its view of the St. Lawrence, by consulting various instruments for observing and measuring environmental parameters.

French landscape architect Michel Boulcourt has dedicated his little one-day vegetable plots to Guy Savoy and all chefs, artists of flavours. His garden is a meeting place for the pleasures of gardening and cooking-the gardener delighted to bring a basket full of fresh and tasty vegetables to the kitchen, while the cook, a true ambassador of the gardener, uses his skills to enhance the harvest. As Michel Boulcourt puts it, "Each one feels such delight when our taste buds succumb to this simple pleasure, for at that moment, when the object of this shared passion is in the mouth, there is a flash of vitality…"

Between earth and sky, between water and forest, between meadow and vegetable plots, a flower garden that weds colours with space and time: its ephemeral glories will succeed each other throughout the whole season, blending with the surroundings; it will draw its life force from lobster traps and invade whelk baskets and fishing nets; its lookout cabin will offer a superb view of the St. Lawrence and the occupants of its birdhouses will delight visitors. This garden created by French landscape architect Dominique Caire offers visitors some of life's subtle pleasures.

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