The International Garden Festival - Registration Deadline 27 October 2026

On the banks of the St. Lawrence River, where the forest meets the water at Grand-Métis, Québec, a stretch of ground has spent over two decades turning bold ideas into living, breathing gardens. Since 2000, the Reford Gardens International Garden Festival has hosted close to 200 experimental installations, from acoustic mirrors to rock gardens that dare you to get lost. Now, the Festival is calling on the next wave of designers to add their names to that legacy.

• PRIZE FUND: CA$ 27,000 per garden

  split as follow:

  • CA$ 7,000 design honorarium

  • Up to CA$ 15,000 for materials

  • Up to CA$ 5,000 in Festival-managed labour,

  • up to CA$ 3,000 for international designers (travel support)

• DATE:

  • Closing date for project submission: Tuesday, October 27, 2026, at 5:00 PM EDT (UTC-4)

BRIEF - The International Garden Festiva 2027.pdf

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For its 28th edition, running June 19 to October 3, 2027, the Festival invites landscape architects, architects, visual artists, and multidisciplinary teams from anywhere in the world to imagine gardens for a site defined by geometry, forest, and river light.

This year's theme, Making Visible: Alternative Geographies, closes out a three-year exploration of humanity's relationship with space and territory. Where 2025's Borders looked at geopolitics and property, and 2026's Mapping Sensitivity explored the emotional textures of land, 2027 pushes further, drawing on the ideas of intersectionality and counter-mapping to surface the geographies that conventional maps leave out.

It's an invitation to think differently about landscape itself: to design not just a beautiful space, but a lens that reveals what's usually hidden.

Here's what designers need to know:

• Theme: Making Visible: Alternative Geographies — the final chapter in a triennial cycle on space and territory, drawing on the concepts of intersectionality and counter-mapping to give voice and visibility to marginalized or underrepresented perspectives.

• Edition & Dates: The 28th edition of the International Garden Festival runs June 19 to October 3, 2027, at Les Jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens in Québec's Gaspésie region.

• What's Being Selected: Five new contemporary garden installations, each to be exhibited for a minimum of two summers.

• Who Can Apply: Landscape architects, architects, visual artists, and multidisciplinary teams from Canada and abroad. One proposal per individual or team.

• The Site: A landscape shaped by two axes — a sunlit grid of 10 x 20 m spaces to the north-south, and a series of shadier, irregularly shaped garden rooms to the west-east — bordered by the St. Lawrence River, aspen forest, and conifers. Clay soil, a water table 1.5 m below the surface, and a growing-zone climate of 4b set the natural parameters.

• Budget: CA$ 27,000 per garden, split into a CA$ 7,000 design honorarium, up to CA$ 15,000 for materials, and CA$ 5,000 in Festival-managed labour, plus travel support of up to CA$ 3,000 for international designers.

• Deadline to Apply: Tuesday, October 27, 2026, at 5:00 PM EDT (UTC-4), submitted online at projects.internationalgardenfestival.ca.

• What to Submit: A concept package (a 180-word project description, layout plan, plant list, elevations, and a rendering), an overall project image, and a team package (project title, an 80-word team bio, a 70-word statement on the theme, past work samples, and CVs).

• On-Site Build: Selected designers travel to Grand-Métis to help build their garden the week of June 13–19, 2027, housed in nearby Métis-sur-Mer at the Festival's expense.

• What the Jury Looks For: Creative response to the theme, originality, sensory and intellectual impact, contribution to the field of garden art, rigorous research, constructability, and sustainable design strategies.

• 

  Ici et ailleurs by José Luis Torres. Photo credit: JC Lemay

• 

  Superstrata by mat-on. Photo credit: Martin Bond

• 

  Back / Ground by Patrick Bérubé. Photo credit: Martin Bond

• 

  You Shall (Not) Pass by Simon Barrette. Photo credit: Martin Bond

This is a rare kind of commission: a full-scale, fully-funded garden, built by a real team, seen by real visitors on one of North America's most storied cultural sites. The question the 2027 theme asks is bigger than any one garden — but the answer starts with a single proposal.

Have a geography worth revealing? The gardens of Grand-Métis are waiting for your vision. Submit your proposal before October 27, 2026, and help shape the landscapes of tomorrow.

Your next big idea starts here.

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