Ninety-two years ago, Ontario-born Elsie Reford (1872-1967) transformed her fishing camp along the St. Lawrence River into an impressive garden. Encouraged to take up horticulture following a bout of appendicitis, Reford spent the following three decades nurturing to life a garden replete with rare species, such as Himalayan blue poppies, which she gradually adapted to the Quebec climate.
Since 1962, Reford Gardens ? also known as the Jardins de Métis ? has been a National Historic Site of Canada, open to the public. Reford?s legacy lives on across twenty acres of lush and scenic land, home to more than 3,000 species of plants from different locations worldwide.
There?s a family legacy, too. In 2000, Elsie?s great-grandson, Alexander Reford, co-founded an International Garden Festival to bring contemporary installations to the site, as a way of presenting both a complement and counterpoint to the historic gardens. (Reford is currently director of both the Gardens and the Festival). The Festival is a showcase for the creative talent of architects, landscape architects and designers. For its 18th edition, the Festival has added six new installations, chosen from 162 submissions received from 30 countries. The call for proposals invited candidates to put the concept of ?play? into practice?resulting in interactive pieces that inspire visitors to engage with landscapes. The designs are conceived as antidotes to the creep of nature-deficit disorder, bringing back the magic of t...