Shenyang Gardens

The Quebec City Garden uses color—the immaculate white of winter and the luxuriant green of summer—to express the contrasting moods of the city’s seasonal landscape. Visitors are invited to explore the topography of the site along the St. Charles and St. Lawrence rivers, the latter called the “river that walks” by the First Nations people.   

The distinctive relief evoking Quebec City’s skyline represents the division of farmland under the seigneurial regime and the dominant silhouette of the fortified city, an imposing legacy of human impact on nature. The garden uses recycled components, vestiges of civilization extracted from and incorporated back into nature in an attempt to restore harmony, a concern very much in the minds of Quebecers these days. The observer’s bird’s eye (or godlike) view of the garden reminds us of not only the human tendency to dominate the landscape, but also the need to step back in order to understand the impact of our activity on the environment. The garden’s vegetation is modelled by the relief, the plants applied like paint on canvas, their specific textures, densities, and shapes—and the interplay of light and shadow—modulating their tonalities.