The notion of the border is central to how the modern world was built. Modern borders, also known as Westphalian, emerged in 1648 after a series of treaties concluded Europe’s religious wars and laid the groundwork for the state system as we know it. Emerging from this Westphalian order, modern borders carved the world into states and sovereignties. But these lines, far from neutral, are the tangible remnants of ‘imperial undertakings’, ‘national movements’ and ‘ideologies of inclusion and exclusion’. And yet, borders are not immutable. They are also liminal and constantly shifting sites of encounter and transformation.

The 26th edition of the International Garden Festival in Grand-Métis, Québec, Canada, running from June 21 – October 5, 2025, takes this charged concept of Borders as its central idea. The festival’s visual identity, designed by bureau60a, draws from the visual language of cartography (lines, dots, spots, symbols), while adopting a biocentric lens to question what borders mean in the context of a garden. “For this year’s theme, we wanted to address issues of territory and land in a postcolonial context, and more specifically, how we depict said territories/nations on maps,” Ève De Garie-Lamanque, art historian, curator and artistic director of the International Garden Festival, shares with STIR.

Since its inception in 2000, the annually-held festival has evolved from showcasing conceptual garden installations to landscapes and international collaborations, rethinking what gardens can be—not merely ornamental retreats, but also deeply political spaces. This year, De Garie-Lamanque invited designers from around the world to rethink the idea of the border through a postcolonial lens and transpose that into a garden environment. “Out of the 180 proposals we received, at least a dozen stood out, leading to rich discussion amongst jury members. The projects selected charmed us with their multiple layers of meaning and their original take on the theme of Borders,” she tells STIR.

Alongside returning installations from earlier editions which include projects such as Bruissement d'ailes, Couleur Nature, FUTURE DRIFTS and Superstrata, that explored the theme of The Ecology of Possibility, this edition features 28 contemporary gardens of which there are four newly commissioned projects. STIR takes a closer look at these offerings.

BACK / GROUND

Patrick Bérubé | Québec, Canada

Private property does not simply mark ownership; it creates boundaries—fences, walls, hedges and even zoning laws to determine who can access these spaces. This logic has also extended into the realm of the garden, as many gardens have been enclosed, walled off from public life. The installation BACK/GROUND by Canadian artist Patrick Bérubé confronts the rise of private property as one of humanity’s most significant disruptions—on par with the climate crisis in its long-term effects on how we relate to the land and the natural world.

By spotlighting the historical shift from shared commons to fenced, privately owned lands, Bérubé reveals how property systems have fundamentally reshaped our spatial imagination. In BACK/GROUND, he tries to challenge the romantic notion of nature as a neutral or untouched backdrop by foregrounding it as a living environment deeply intertwined with human existence. The installation takes the form of three pitched-roof volumes and, within each structure, fragments of timber and plant life are displayed—nature no longer being a backdrop but an intrinsic part of the structure—urging visitors to reflect on the artificiality of the separation between humans and their ecosystems.

Peek-a-Boo

Hermine Demaël, Stephen Zimmerer | Québec, Canada + United States

The project by architectural designer and researcher Hermine Demaël and landscape architect Stephen Zimmerer attempts to reimagine the border not as a vertical line dividing territories, but as a horizontal threshold between the earth and the sky. By flipping the traditional border on its axis, Peek-a-boo transforms the ground into a dynamic, interactive surface that invites visitors to engage with the landscape physically and imaginatively.

Rather than treating the border as a rigid line, the interactive installation plays with the idea of an edge as a liminal zone where different entities meet. Four trapdoors scattered across a field of lilac steel grates serve as entry or interruption points—inviting visitors to engage with the garden. These trapdoors can be opened, closed or rearranged to create different spatial configurations, revealing the fluid nature of boundaries. From some of these openings, plants sprout and stretch upward, reclaiming the space between door and air—suggesting that nature, by its nature, resists fixed borders.

Scars of Conflict

Michael Hyttel Thorø | Denmark

During conflict, especially large-scale ones such as the First World War, entire landscapes are transformed: trenches carved through farmland, forests razed, borders redrawn. Denmark-based landscape architect Michael Hyttel Thorø drew inspiration from these war-torn landscapes for his project Scars of Conflict. Thorø aims to recreate this sense of rupture through a fractured garden path that winds through mounded earth and uneven surfaces, mimicking the topography of war-torn battlefields, inviting visitors to walk through and physically encounter a landscape shaped by violence.

“The project is deeply rooted in history and human experience. This artificial post-war landscape simultaneously evokes past, present and future conflicts. It stands as a poetic and powerful symbol of resilience in the face of hardship,” De Garie-Lamanque tells STIR. The installation reminds us that conflict does not only redraw maps—it ruptures ecosystems, displaces species and severs communities from their land. And yet, it gestures toward nature’s resilience as life begins to take root, reclaiming the ground.

You Shall (Not) Pass

Simon Barrette | Québec, Canada

With a sly nod to its pop-cultural origins with the film The Lord of the Rings, the installation You Shall (Not) Pass, designed by Montreal-based architect Simon Barrette, employs humour and tactility to reimagine the archetype of a border. Composed of thousands of survey markers strung on wire, the installation takes the form of an oversized bead curtain suspended in the forest—physically cleaving the landscape. It reimagines the border not as a fixed obstruction but as a threshold between visible and invisible, psychological and geographic.

By inviting visitors to walk through it, the immersive installation attempts to disarm the authority often associated with real-world borders in deciding who can or cannot be permitted to pass. It turns the act of crossing into an embodied experience, where visitors are made acutely aware of their own position and agency. In this way, You Shall (Not) Pass transforms the border from a symbol of rigidity into something open to negotiation.

British writer Olivia Laing writes in her book The Garden Against Time (2024), “We’re poised on the hinge of history, living in the era of mass extinction, the catastrophic endgame of humanity’s relationship with the natural world. The garden could be a refuge from that, a place of change, but it can and has also embodied the power structures and mindsets that have driven its devastation.” As borders are redrawn, breached and dissolved in the present—by climate change, migration and global conflict—the garden, too, becomes a place to reflect on what it means to live within and alongside shifting borders and a changing natural environment. This year’s edition of the International Garden Festival tries to embody this vision and turns the garden into a space of critical engagement.

When asked about what conversations or reactions this edition hopes to provoke, De Garie-Lamanque observes, “While I cannot expect every visitor to be receptive to all the issues that are brought forward by this year’s Festival, I do hope that a concept or a project will resonate with them. Whether their visit conjures up a distant memory, echoes their everyday life or connotes current events – every connection has meaning. And if someone’s visit can either trigger or nourish an ongoing reflection on geopolitics and/or cartography, I will feel I have done something right.” The projects on display cross disciplinary boundaries, challenge conventional notions of garden and landscape and investigate how borders, both political and ecological, define the world we inhabit and the shifting maps of our time.