Since its inaugural edition at the turn of the millennium, the International Garden Festival at Reford Gardens has evolved into one of North America’s leading avenues for exploring new ideas in landscape design and architecture. Over the past 25 editions — including the 2024 festival, which is on until October 6 — the annual fair has announced its 2025 theme of “Borders,” with a call for proposals now open for the festival 26th edition.

Open to all landscape architects, architects, visual artists, and multidisciplinary teams from across Canada and around the world, the International Garden Festival offers an opportunity for multi-disciplinary explorations to shape the future of our shared landscapes. In 2025, the International Garden Festival “invites designers from all horizons to rethink the notion of borders in today’s post-colonial context, and to transpose their reflections into a garden-environment that blurs disciplines, renegotiates preconceived ideas about the garden/landscape, and actively dialogues with the visitor.”  

The open and expansive brief allows for a wide range of spatial and contextual responses to map a changing terrain. “Constantly renegotiated, borders also act as passageways, places of encounter and exchange,” the brief notes. Submissions to the 2025 International Garden Festival are open until November 4, with the complete details of submission and selection criteria — including site locations on the Reford Gardens grounds — outlined via the festival’s official website.

In the meantime, the landmark 25th edition remains on display until early October. Dubbed “The Ecology of Possibility,” the 2024 fair showcases a total of 27 gardens, including six new installations — and two extramural projects — created for this year’s festival. Exploring the social responsibility of public landscapes, the new gardens include the playful and thought-provoking “Couleur Nature” — a sort of swimming pool in reverse — by Quebec’s own Vanderveken, Architecture + Paysage, as well as installations by Belgium’s Pioniersplanters, American designer Julia Lines Wilson, and Italy’s mat-on, as well as a new permanent project (“Pergola”) by Quebec’s Jérôme Lapierre Architecte.

Situated on the shores of the St. Lawrence and Mitis rivers at the gateway to the Gaspé Peninsula, Reford Gardens was originally cultivated by gardener and plant collector Elsie Reford between 1926 and 1958. Now designated a national historic site, the riverside landscape has been home to the International Garden Festival since 2000. Led Marie-Josée Lacroix, Denis Lemieux, Philippe Poullaouec-Gonidec, and Alexander Reford, the annual festival has seen nearly 190 contemporary gardens exhibited on the grounds over the course of its 25-year history.

The deadline for submissions to the 2025 International Garden Festival is November 4, 2024 at 17:00 EST. The full details are available via the festival’s official website.