Sacré Potager
Les jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens, International Garden Festival
Sacré potager is an installation exhibited at the 14th, 15th, and 16th edition of the International Garden Festival, held in Grand-Métis, Québec from 2013 to 2016. In 2015, the installation was exposed at the Musée des beaux-arts de Québec.
Sacré Potager was chosen by the jury for this international competition from among the 290 proposals submitted by more than 700 designers from 31 countries. Sacré Potager (literally, the sacred vegetable garden) evokes the sacred nature of plants and their special place in our world. For millennia, humans have raised monuments to worship the sacred. Over time, the notion of what is sacred has evolved. So too has our environment.
Historically men have left the imprint of their beliefs, their customs and their faith through various monuments they have erected and placed in the landscape. In Sacré potager various wooden altars arranged in the garden evoke crossroad oratories or altars made into private plots.
The installation offers and leads the visitor into a poetic fiction of the "sacred" side of garden and culinary heritage. Rare vegetables, that are ancient and native, evoke the biodiversity that is shrinking, undermined by the processes of selection, production, and marketing of modern society.
Votive candles adorn the displays, customized with images of forgotten vegetables. An invitation for the visitor to make an offering for their return to our gardens and grocery shelves. With a witty combination of the sacred and the profane, the garden is mainly a pretext to initiate a common understanding that seeks to raise awareness and promote biodiversity.
