Glog
End of the season (October 12, 2010)
The Gardens closed on October 3 and autumn is upon us – the geese have returned to the bay of the Mitis River, the leaves are beginning to turn and the sounds of machinery can be heard as we rush to complete several construction projects before winter.
The cycle of a garden is one of constant rejuvenation. Plants burst into life in the spring, bloom, set their seed and their store their resources to affront the long and cold winters. Similarly, our staff spend much of May and June constructing and building. In July and August they are busy maintaining the gardens and fielding questions from visitors. September and October are the two months when we set the foundations for the future, preparing beds, cutting and pruning and planting for next year. This year has been exceptional in that we have been building for much of the summer, constructing new buildings in our service area, making improvements to existing structures and commencing an exciting project to restore Elsie Reford’s vegetable and picking garden.
This summer we have been in the news a great deal. One of the feature gardens of this year’s edition of the International Garden Festival, Le Jardin de la connaissance by Berlin-based landscape architect Thilo Folkerts and Canadian artist Rodney Latourelle elicited much comment from visitors and journalists and even from social commentators who see the garden as a metaphor of the changing relationship between readers and their books (see our press section for a selection of the articles). Our new line of culinary products has created lots of buzz and encouraged us to continue to develop new products for our visitors using plants and flavours from the gardens and our collections of plants and flowers. The inaugural broadcast on Télé-Québec of the beautiful film by Philippe Baylaucq, Il était deux fois un jardin, has genereated many compliments for the gardens and the filmmakers and fostered growing interest in the story of the gardens and the International Garden Festival.
We invite you to visit our website during the coming months and follow our projects and news.
