05 Sep 2025
The International Garden Festival is launching a call for proposals to select designers to create the new temporary gardens for the Festival’s 27th edition, which will open on June 20, 2026, on the site of Les Jardins de Métis | Reford Gardens.
2026 theme – Mapping Sensitivity
In the wake of the triennial thematic cycle initiated a year ago, Mapping Sensitivity pursues an ongoing reflection on the poetics of space – namely, how we relate to our physical surroundings and, more broadly, to the world. While Borders focused on the challenges of organising and representing geographical space, immediately raising geopolitical concerns, the theme of this 27th edition takes the tournant sensible [“the sensitive turn”].
It draws its inspiration from sensitive mapping, which, far more than a simple alternative to traditional cartography, is distinguished by its consideration of the subjective and immaterial dimensions of a place. Sensitive mapping thus traces the shared representations of a space that is described, lived, and felt. It considers the real experience that users have of a given space and the emotional relationship they develop with it, considering cultural, phenomenological, experiential, cognitive, and contextual factors.
For its 27th edition, the International Garden Festival invites designers from all backgrounds to design a garden using a sensitive, fundamentally inclusive, and relational approach. At once real and fantasised, this garden will take on its full meaning thanks to the users who frequent it, shaping it in turn.
Eligibility of candidates
This call for proposals is open to all landscape architects, architects, visual artists, and multidisciplinary teams from Canada and abroad. The Festival encourages participants to form multidisciplinary teams. Applicants are limited to one proposal, either as individuals or as a team. Participants can be from a single city or country, or can cross international boundaries.
Designers are invited to design a garden that can take place in one of the axes of the Festival. The artistic and technical committees of the Festival will identify, in collaboration with the designers, the site that will best showcase their project. Designers will be asked to imagine their garden for exhibition for at least two summers, and to propose strategies for the repurposing or recycling of the garden or its materials after the end of its exhibition.
