Jardins de Métis

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jardins de Métis

The Jardins de Métis or Reford Gardens in English are an English landscape garden in the municipality of Grand-Métis in the Bas-Saint-Laurent administrative region of the Canadian province of Québec . The eight-hectare garden is located near the south bank of the St. Lawrence River on the Gaspé peninsula .

history

The garden includes the summer residence Villa Estevan, built in 1887 by the Scottish-Canadian owner of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) George Stephen, 1st Baron Mount Stephen . The villa and its surroundings were used for fishing by him and his family in summer and in the salmon fishing season.

After 1926 the niece of the builder Elsie Reford settled here and converted the place of hunting, riding and fishing into her private garden kingdom in the next decades until 1958. In 15 different areas of the gardens, she had around 3000 different plant species settle. The construction of the garden very often required the construction of planting soil in the very rocky landscape, for example using peat, clay and sand. Contemporary works of art also found their place in this English garden.

The Jardins de Métis have been open to visitors since 1962. After Elsie Reford's death in 1967, the ensemble became the property of the Province of Québec, which, however, sold it in 1995 to a private foundation under the direction of Elsie Reford's great-grandson, Alexander Reford . The landscaped garden and Villa Estevan have been a National Historic Site of Canada since 1995 . An International Garden Festival has been held annually in the Jardins de Métis since 2000 . As part of this festival, international artists and garden architects present their ideas for designing gardens in the landscape garden and in the neighboring, recultivated areas on the St. Lawrence River.

literature

  • Alexander Reford: Jardins de Métis . Les guides des jardins du Québec, Editions FIDES
  • Alexander Reford: Elsie's Paradise - Reford Gardens .
  • Alexander Reford: Treasures of Reford Gardens - Elsie Reford's Floral Legacy .
  • Lesley Johnstone (ed.): Hybrids: Reshaping the Contemporary Garden at Métis , 2007, ISBN 978-1-894965705 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ This is garden provocation! in FAZ of July 9, 2011, page Z3


Coordinates: 48 ° 37 '42 "  N , 68 ° 7' 23"  W.