Kai Schiemenz: Paradise - 11th International Garden Festival in Les Jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens

le balto invites Kai Schiemenz
Bois de biais: Ces jours-ci je suis fier de mon petit paradis
I’m So Proud of My Paradise These Days

June 26 to October 3, 2010

An Ambitious Program of Gardens
Recognized as one of the world’s leading garden festivals, the International Garden Festival features conceptual gardens that are at the crossroads of landscape architecture, garden design, architecture, design and environmental art. The event will take place on the site of Les Jardins de Métis / Reford Gardens from June 26 to October 3, 2010.

The 11th edition of the Festival will present 21 ephemeral gardens created by 65 designers from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, United States and the United Kingdom. The lineup of conceptual gardens includes three new gardens by designers selected by a jury following an international competition and four new gardens created by designers from Berlin invited to take part in the Festival.

A garden is a space, in which we realize our beliefs in and our visions of social and natural ideal(s). It is an island, not a fathomless place such as Utopia. The garden is a showcase space, 1:1 implemented in the ground. It does not separate imagination from reality. For the 5th year of their garden called bois de biais, atelier le balto invited the Berlin based artist Kai Schiemenz to complete their landscape architecture. He suggested for their garden, which over time has almost become a forest of willows and poplars, to build a walkable structure out of wood. It paraphrases a type of a “folly”, where the visitor can enter and climb the stairs to the platform, to get an overview of the garden. But during the summer the trees will outgrow the structure and make it partially disappear. The sculpture works as an allegory that rewrites the beauty of a garden that grows into a forest.

scetch of I'm so proud of my garden, Collage

New Forms of Paradise
Since the beginning of time humans have imagined paradise on earth as a garden. These places, by evoking our senses, have pulled us out of our everyday world to experience the sublime. What does paradise look like today?

Building on emerging practices in landscape architecture, participating designers have been invited to imagine their garden of paradise; inspired by the history of gardening and exploring philosophy, religion and history and incorporating aspects of contemporary society and their own personal history to bring to life new forms, tastes, fragrances and paradisiacal landscapes.

Participating for the second time in the International Garden Festival, Berlin-based garden architects atelier le balto invited Kai Schiemenz to work with them for the 2010 International Garden Festival in the Jardin de Médis, Redford Gardens near Québec, Canada to install a folly in their previously designed garden "bois de biase".

The International Garden Festival is the leading contemporary garden festival in North America. Presented since 2000, the Festival has exhibited more than 115 gardens on the festival site and in Montreal, Toronto, France, Italy and the United Kingdom.