The International Garden Festival Unveils Winning Projects for 27th Edition
The winners of the 27th edition of the International Garden Festival have been announced.
This year, the festival invited designers from all backgrounds to design a garden using a sensitive, fundamentally inclusive, and relational approach.
Created by Marie-Josée Lacroix, Denis Lemieux, Philippe Poullaouec-Gonidec, and Alexander Reford at the turn of the new millennium, the International Garden Festival is recognized as one of the most important contemporary garden festivals in North America.
The latest edition of the festival, which is set to open on June 20, 2026, will take place on the site of Les Jardins de Métis – Reford Gardens. The theme, “Mapping Sensitivity,” draws its inspiration from sense mapping, which is distinguished by its consideration of the subjective and immaterial dimensions of a place. It traces the shared representations of a space that is described, lived, and felt, and considers the real experience that users have of a given space as well as the emotional relationship they develop with it.
This year’s jury was made up of Monique Keller, architect and urban planner EPFL, independent curator, Jean-François Légaré, landscape architect, owner and director, Nomade Paysage, contemporary dance artist, Mélanie Mignault, landscape architect AAPQ FCSLA, partner, NIPpaysage, Alexander Reford, director, International Garden Festival, Ève De Garie-Lamanque, artistic director, International Garden Festival, and François Leblanc, technical coordinator, International Garden Festival.
In the midst of the triennial thematic cycle, which began a year ago, the upcoming theme aims to pursue an ongoing reflection on the “poetics of space” and how we relate to our physical surroundings and the world. While last edition’s theme, “Borders,” focused on the challenges of organizing and representing geographical space and raising geopolitical concerns, the theme of the 27th edition takes “the sensitive turn.”
The visual identity for the current thematic cycle (2025-27) has been entrusted to bureau60a from Quebec, an independent design studio whose graphic proposal transcends territorial and temporal barriers.
The winners include the following.
Hugh Taylor | Manitoba, Canada + États-Unis. Photo credit: Hugh Taylor
Again, a Garden
Hugh Taylor | Manitoba, Canada + United States
Again, a Garden is a walled garden; a pavilion constructed from cut fallen logs sandwiched between metal plates within which native pollinator species are planted. It traces the flows of life in the garden and its nearby environment. Even as it provides moments for rest and reflection, the garden encourages visitors to become aware of their surroundings as a cycle where decay and life are understood as integral parts of a single system.
Ulli Heckmann | Allemagne + Pays-Bas. Photo credit: Ulli Heckmann
Frame
Ulli Heckmann | Germany + the Netherlands
Frame is an architectural reflection about how we perceive both our environment and ourselves in a given situation. The sculptural object provides curated views and different levels of intimacy to show the complexity of spatial experience and to highlight our viewpoint as the basis of our perception. By inviting us to discover what is not visible, Frame facilitates experimentation with architectural space, as well as body and environmental awareness.
Etienne Lapleau | France. Photo credit: Etienne Lapleau
Mentho-artemision
Etienne Lapleau | France
Like a sense map, Mentho-artemision reconstructs, in a confined space, contrasting sensations usually perceived at landscape scale. By bringing together the distinct environments in which mint and mugwort grow, the garden condenses sensory perceptions: visitors feel the transitions from dry to humid through sight, smell, and touch.
Measured Architecture Inc. + Tamotsu Tongu, Kumpei Wakino | Colombie-Britannique, Canada. Photo credit: Measured Architecture Inc.
Tainai-Meguri
Measured Architecture Inc. + Tamotsu Tongu, Kumpei Wakino | British Columbia, Canada
Tainai-Meguri envisions this digital space as a cave made tangible by a sweeping arbour. A convergence of nature, water, and light brings about a return to origin; a meditative journey in which inner and outer worlds dissolve.
Ellen Harris | États-Unis. Photo credit: Ellen Harris
Worm’s Eye
Ellen Harris | United States
The anthropologist and political scientist James C. Scott identified the cartographic “view from above” as the position from which large-scale entities, such as modern states and multinational corporations, impose conditions of legibility on the subjects and territories under their control. Worm’s Eye imagines a “camouflage architecture” that frustrates this kind of top-down legibility and encourages visitors to have a different understanding of place: intimate, local, and necessarily partial.
Two projects also received a special mention from the jury: À hauteur de tige, by Sarah Bengle and Vivi Lamarre from Quebec, and Threshold of Succession, by Matthew Hickey, Adrian Hutchinson, Michael Ormston-Holloway, and Hannah Wallace-Lund from Ontario.
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