Festival | Previous Editions
Le jardin de bâtons bleus
Blue Stick Garden was created for the inaugural season of the International Garden Festival in 2000. Its inspiration stems from two unique features of the site: the Himalayan blue poppy painstakingly adapted to the region’s microclimate, and the mixed flowering borders of the original heritage garden from the 1920s. Both are the work of the garden’s creator Elsie Reford, who was inspired by Gertrude Jekyll whose designs and plantings were transforming English gardens.
We began with an image of the garden’s iconic blue poppy, which was scanned, pixelated, and translated into a collection of long, thin sticks. These were then "planted" to form an abstraction of the traditional mixed border. Painted blue on three sides and orange on the fourth, the sticks create a chromatic effect that is as surprising as it is simple: a visitor wandering through the labyrinthine installation experiences an ever-shifting set of views and vistas. The sensually engaging experience reinterprets the spirit of colour and movement embodied by the original gardens of Elsie Reford, injecting it with contemporary visual appeal.
Architect: Claude Cormier, architecture de paysage + Design urbain
Years of exhibition: 2000, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012
