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While contemporarylandscape and garden

design in Quebec is resolutelyattuned to Western design practice,it is also firmly anchored in its localfolklore and landscape setting. Thehard granite base of the LaurentianShield, covered by the green blanketof the boreal forest, inspires our col-lective memory as it does our senseof well-being. It represents a vastunknown territory, a seeminglyunending source of useful materials,a refuge for flora and fauna, a shel-ter for human settlement and asource of artistic inspiration andexpression. Above all, the forestexcites our imagination.

The rivers that flow throughthe Precambrian Laurentian shieldserved as the pathways through theforests of the New World and as theonly gateway to the interior of thecontinent. From the vantage pointof mountain heights, discontinuous

views of the vast forest floor revealeda fresh and wondrous wildernesswith a diverse and rich array of floraand fauna (Figure 1). JacquesCartier first observed this forest set-ting from the summit of Mont-Royalnear the Indian settlement ofHochelaga, later to become the Cityof Montreal:

On reaching the summit we had aview of the land for more thanthirty leagues round about. Towardsthe north there is a range of moun-tains running east and west (theLaurentians), and another range tothe south (the Appalachians).Between these ranges lies the finestland it is possible to see, beingarable, level and flat. And in themidst of this flat region one saw theriver extending beyond the spotwhere we had left our long boats.At that point there is the most vio-lent rapid it is possible to see, which

we were unable to pass. (Burpee1946, 30–31. Translated fromPerrault 1996).

This description of the New Worldparadise, both Arcadian and sub-lime, continues to serve as a framethrough which the forest is per-ceived, portrayed, and appreciatedby those who inhabit it. The chal-lenges inherent in the conservationand use of the forest domain havehelped shape the intellectual frame-work and the values of the peoplesof Quebec, much as it has in othercultures at other times.

The Brothers Grimm consid-ered the forests of Germany as sym-bolic reserves of popular and oraltraditions. Their fairytales weredesigned to “tap the vital reservoirsof culture and memory of the past,and to illustrate the values of thecommon folk not the rulers; theways of life not of war and con-quest” (Harrison 1992, 165). In the

Landscape Journal 23:2–04 ISSN 0277-2426© 2004 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System Jacobs 85

Folklore and Forest Fragments: ReadingContemporary Landscape Design in QuebecPeter Jacobs

Peter Jacobs, FCSLA and FASLA, isProfessor of Landscape Architectureat the École d’architecture depaysage, Université de Montréal. Hehas been an Invited Scholar andVisiting Professor at the Universityof British Columbia, HarvardUniversity, and the Technion(Israel); and has taught in schools ofarchitecture in France, Italy, Spain,and Columbia. He has served asChair of the EnvironmentalPlanning Commission of the IUCNfor twelve years, and more recentlyas Chair of the Senior Fellows,Dumbarton Oaks program ofLandscape and Garden Studies. Hisprofessional work focuses on land-scape and urban design and on thesustainable development of the arc-tic communities and landscapes ofNunavik, northern Quebec.

Abstract: Whether intentionally or not, several young landscape designers in Quebec,Canada, have made use of the folklore and the fabric of the boreal forest as a metaphorthat informs their project proposals. Recent designs for garden festivals in North Americaand Europe, projects for urban parks, and even town plans have been inspired by a con-cern for the future of the forest regime, a concern for its health, an appreciation of itsbeauty, and an understanding of its fragility. As a consequence of the hard graniteLaurentian shield in Quebec, most of this forest regime is accessible only through the net-work of rivers and streams that serve as the highways of discovery and use of the forestlandscapes. A number of contemporary landscape and garden designs are discussed withreference to the emotional forces that inspire a profound attachment to the forest thatmany call home. While these projects stretch the limits of our idea of the garden and oflandscape process, they are warmly embraced precisely because they capture the essence ofa landscape setting that resonates in the collective soul of the population to which theyare addressed.

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German Romantic imagination, theforest had both genetic and sym-bolic connections to memory andwisdom.

In Israel, the drive to embracethe forest as a national emblemis charged with emotion. YaelZerabavel (1996) relates how treessymbolize the beauty, purity, andmagnitude of nature, while plantingtrees leads to the redemption of theland, a means of reintroducingnature into the landscape. Forestsredeem the fallen from oblivion andthe land from affliction; the forestserves as a living memorial for thedead—a symbolic continuity fromthe past to future. An ancient forestcreates ties with the past, new foreststhe promise for the future.

Yet forest precincts have alwayssuccumbed to our appetite fortheir resources. Plato decried thedeforestation around the hills ofAthens, observing that as a result ofnaval battles of conquest and com-merce, “forests became fleets, sink-ing to the bottom of the wine-darksea.” Later, the clearing that shel-tered the first inhabitants of Romeon the Capitoline Hill “long ago lostits limits, and from its wide open eye

one can see today not only the ruinsof a great ancient city but also thoseof an even more ancient forest”(Harrison 1992, 55).

In Renaissance England, therole of conserving the forest was aroyal prerogative and responsibility.John Manwood (1592) wrote, “A for-est is a certain territory of woodygrounds and fruitful pastures, privi-leged for wild beasts and fowls of theforest, chase and warren, to rest andabide there in the safe protectionsof the king, for his delight and plea-sure” (72). The Royal Hunt enacteda ritual that affirmed the role of themonarchy in protecting wildlife bysubtracting vast reaches of woodlandfrom the public domain. In short, ifthe forest ceased to be a sanctuaryfor wildlife, it was no longer a forest.Curiously, both the forest and thechurch of the time performed thesame or similar functions; that ofgranting refuge. In some cases, thesanctity of the forest was used as abase from which “outlaws,” such asRobin Hood, would operate to

address the abuses of the monarchyand to re-establish the rule ofnatural law.

William Gilpin also bemoanedthe fate of the beloved English for-est, subject to the woodsman’s axeand the navy’s seemingly insatiableappetite for mature timber. FrancisGeorge Heath (1887) observedfrom the growing shadows of thenineteenth century English city:

Greenwood shade, over large areashas given place to hot and dustystreets. Railways, mines, and manu-factures have obliterated, allaround us, the forest lawn, redo-lent of the perfume of wild plants;the forest heath, empurpled withthe bloom of heather, or goldenwith flowering gorse; the wood-land copse and ancient statelygrove which sweetly strained themusic of the winds. (vi)

In the New World, where forests stillcovered about 35 percent of theUnited States and even more ofCanada, Gifford Pinchot (1905)affirmed, “Next to the earth itselfthe forest is the most useful servantof man. Not only does it sustain andregulate the streams, moderate thewinds, and beautify the land, but italso supplies wood, the most widelyused of all materials” (7). Yet at thesame time, C.S. Sargent, an equallydistinguished forester, observed “wehave wasted in less than a centuryenough forest to have supplied forall time a considerable part of theworld with lumber” (Sargent1896, 11).

Forests everywhere continue toshrink at alarming rates, subject tosignificant loss as a result of tradi-tional practices of shifting cultiva-tion and the gathering of fuel wood,as well as contemporary indus-trial practices related to uncon-trolled logging and opportunisticdevelopment.

To feed and shelter the growingcommunities of the world and tocontinue to support economicgrowth, more land has beencleared for cultivation in the past100 years than in all previous cen-turies combined. More than 11million hectares of tropical forestsare destroyed annually. As a directconsequence of this destruction,

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Figure 1. La Mauricie National Park, Québec, Canada. (Photograph by Parks Canada)The viewshed included in this image includes approximately 400,000 hectares (1,000,000 acres),the minimum extent of a wilderness landscape where little or no discernible human impact hasoccurred for a period of 50 years or more.

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between 10,000 and 100,000species are reported to becomingextinct each year. ( Jacobs1990, 75)

Canada’s ancient Boreal forest, aten-thousand-year-old ecosystem,is the largest wilderness forest inNorth America, yet more than50 percent of this territory is regis-tered in industrial forest tenure.Conservation groups argue that oversix hundred thousand hectares ofthe Boreal forest are cut each yearand that over 90 percent of this log-ging is subject to industrial clear cut-ting (Stark 2004). Sadly, one of themost significant stretches of thenorthern Boreal forest, in Quebec, issubject to encroachment from allsides (Figure 2). Only very recentlyhas a government commission beencharged with the mission of deter-mining the extent of forest lossesand the means of calculating itspotential yield on a sustainable basis(Francoeur 2004). One hopes thatthese and other urgent measures arenot too late to maintain a viable for-est regime.

Interestingly, action has re-sulted not so much from an alert orvigilant government but by an out-raged and creative citizenry andartistic community. L’Erreur Boréale, abeautifully crafted film by RichardDesjardins (1999), and other formsof art have served as powerful toolsin focusing public attention on thefuture of the forest habitat. Thisphenomenon is particularly truewith respect to a number of recentgarden installations and landscapeproposals in Quebec.

In the initial development of atheory of three natures, John DixonHunt (1996, 36) speaks of the debtthat the formal properties of gardendesign, or the third nature, oweto the second nature of agricul-tural fields, irrigation canals, andorchards. In this paper, the debt ispartially repaid insofar as the forestwilderness, or first nature, is givenmeaning and support through theintervention and ephemeral pro-posals of garden design.

Spatially, these projects inter-pret the forest as a blanket, a refugefor wildlife as for human occupation.

Pathways structure movement andorientation through an immenseand, at times, forbidding landscape.They traverse the forest, passingmodest clearings produced by natu-ral process or the need for humanshelter and sustenance. Morerecently, the forest has been sub-jected to severe fragmentation fromthe intrusive pattern of human set-tlement, the mining of the earth’scrust, and our hunger for forestproducts. Wherever these transfor-mations have occurred, at whatevertime in human history, it is alwaysthe forest edge that defines thatmagical boundary between civiliza-tion and the wild, an edge thatretreats if only to preserve its veryintegrity.

The forest blanket, its path-ways, clearings, fragments, and edgesrepresent a spatial matrix and designvocabulary used to structure con-temporary concern for the future ofthe forest in Quebec. This concernis expressed with deep poetic feelingin a variety of garden and landscapeproposals designed to shock, disturb,

cajole, and plead for an understand-ing and an appreciation of ournatural heritage and collective roots.

Forest BlanketCanada shelters 35 percent of

the earth’s Boreal forests and ishome to millions of Canadians,many of them aboriginal. Econom-ically, about one-third of this surfacehas been allocated to industrialdevelopment, hydroelectric projects,and mineral, gas and oil explo-ration, while logging occurs at a rateof a million acres a year.

Forestry is an integral part ofthe livelihood of one hundred thou-sand Québécois, generating about$12 billion yearly; Quebec is theworld’s largest exporter of wood andpaper products (Lalonde 2003, A5).As an ecosystem, “The Boreal forestfilters millions of liters of waterevery day, stores carbon dioxide,produces oxygen, rebuilds soils andrestores nutrients, holds back flood-waters, releases needed water intorivers and streams, and providesfood and shelter for hundreds

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Figure 2. Logging the Boreal forest. (Photograph by Ministère des RessourcesNaturelles, Quebec)Clear-cut forestry practices based on maximizing lumber profits are gradually being replaced withmultiple-use strategies that incorporate recreational and aesthetic considerations. In some cases,agreements between private and public interests have resulted in the protection of important forestlandmarks such as Mount Katahdin in northern Maine, the site that inspired Henry DavidThoreau’s passionate appeal to preserve the wild.

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of species, including humans”(Lalonde 2003, A4).

The forest is also an importantpart of our national identity, a some-what abstract concept that reflectsthe way in which the forest wasinhabited, and the difficult historyof logging at great distances fromthe family hearth in the cold andbitter winters of the northernreaches of Quebec. The story of theChasse Galerie (Figure 3) conveys thesense of isolation that the forest rep-resented, as well as the underlyingmoral fabric of the time (Beaugrand1900/Boivin 2001). It is a tale thatinforms virtually all of the schoolcurricula and is amongst one of themost beloved of bedtime stories:

It was New Year’s Eve in a loggingcamp in the Gatineau region. Themen were having a well-deservedrest. They huddled about thewood stove in the shack and begantelling stories, singing and tappingtheir feet. The bottle of Caribouwas passed around, and soon theyall began longing for their homesand sweethearts, far away inMontréal. Then the biggest andthe strongest of them all suggestedthat they pay their families a littlesurprise visit. How could they do

that, they protested, when theywere leagues away in the middle ofthe woods, buried under moun-tains of snow? “Ah,” he replied,“The only way is by canoe.” At thiseveryone paled. They knew hemeant the chasse-galerie. A riskyventure, flying through the sky ina birch bark canoe. The Devilwhispered such ideas into men’sears with the hope of snatchingtheir souls if they were not back incamp before daybreak. But theyclimbed into the canoe and spedoff into the sky. They had to steercarefully, once they arrived inMontreal, to avoid the manychurches reaching skyward. Noeasy task in the city of 100steeples! But the big lumberjackkept them on track, and theyreturned to the camp just in timethe next morning, a bit worse forwear but safe and sound and stillin possession of their souls. (MIM2003, 38)

Even prior to this folklore setting,the First Nations of the region hadestablished an interdependent relationship with the forest. TheGarden of the First Nations, situated inthe Montreal Botanical Gardens,seeks to interpret the setting of theforest regime prior to the arrival of

European settlers (Figure 4). Thegarden design is virtually invisible,much as the presence of the nativepeoples in the forests of Quebec leftlittle evidence of their passing andthe innumerable uses that theymade of the forest resources.

The site plan features the vari-ous activities of hunting, gathering,and camping that are shared by allof these nations. The garden,located in a forest of mature treesorganized to recall the forest envi-ronments of Quebec’s eleven aborig-inal peoples still living in theprovince, features plants that wereused for food, medicine, andspiritual ceremonies, and illustrateshow the Iroquois practiced agri-culture and horticulture.

As visitors move through theforest, they discover discrete designinterventions such as stone circles inthe ground where ceremonies mayhave taken place or where campsiteswith tepee rings may have beeninstalled during a journey throughthe forest. The forest flowsthrough and around the modernarchitectural pavilion, as discreet asthe garden design, much as it flowsover the garden.


Figure 3. La Chasse-galerie. Courtesy of Mosaïcultures Internationales MontréalThe legend recounts the pact made with the devil who, on festive occasions, tempted lumberjacks working in the isolated forests of Quebec to board a fly-ing canoe in order to visit their families and sweethearts. They forfeited their souls if they failed to return to their camp site by dawn the next morning.

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Yet, much has changed sincethe First Nations inhabited theBoreal forest. In Vitro (Figure 5), aswell as a number of other projects tofollow, is an ephemeral designlocated in one of the forest roomsthat form the setting for the annualInternational Garden Festival in thevillage of Métis at the mouth of theSt. Lawrence River some 600 kilome-ters northeast of Montreal. The proj-ect offers a commentary on thetransformation of the forest ashomeland and cultural setting to asimple commodity to be consumed,its products displayed on supermar-ket shelves.

The visitor is invited to enterthe garden along a plywood walkway,laid diagonally across the forestclearing, where each of the stan-dard industrial sheets is made of adifferent species of wood, carefullylabeled and displayed. First con-fronted with wooden barrels plantedwith small spruce, a kind of mobileor nomadic forest uprooted from itslarger natural context, the visitor is

then faced with a metal shelving sys-tem that holds row upon row of jamjars that are used to conserve sprucecones or the multiple saplings usedto reforest the clear cuts of industry,commonly referred to as “carrots.”Gigantic blueberries, a geneticexperiment gone mad, remind usof the wealth of food and medicinesthat are trampled by the drive to logthe forest (Figure 6). The designstrategy of uprooting and discon-necting the forest from its naturalmatrix of support, and of displayingthese components as products onthe supermarket shelves of societyraises both our awareness and ouranxiety. That this is done withwhimsy and visual grace simplyheightens our willingness to con-front the serious questions thatchallenge our understanding of therole of the contemporary forest.

The garden explores the mean-ing of the new forest, a site subjectto industrial technologies, geneticresearch, and accelerated reforesta-tion, usually achieved through theuse of monocultures, all designed toincrease the output of forest prod-ucts. These contrast with the moretraditional perception of the food,shelter, and calm of the forest andthe visual and sensory qualitiesof movement through it. Produc-tion and use are juxtaposed tothe natural and cultural setting.This dynamic is interpreted with adelightful sense of poetry andhumor yet with serious concern forthe future of the forest regime.

Forest PathMovement through the forest

along its winding paths reveals thepatchwork quilt of forest habitat andthe changing moods derived fromopenness and closure, sunlight clear-ings and the darkness of dense for-est cove. François Terrasson (1994,30) suggests, “A mental alchemy

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Figure 4. The Garden of the First Nations, Williams, Asselin, Ackoui et Associés Inc., landscape architects. Located in the MontrealBotanical Gardens, Montréal, Québec. 2001. (Photograph by WAA)The Great Peace of Montréal was signed on August 4, 1701. The garden is intended to commemorate the treaty between the First Nations and theFrench Colonial Government of the time. The garden stresses the relationships of the native peoples of Quebec to the plants of the forest, plains, and tun-dra set within mature trees in the heart of the Montreal Botanical Gardens.

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occurs as a result of contact with thewild, with the oak and birch tree andwith our origins. Silence and soli-tude, the forest is a place of magic,and should remain so.”

Ironically, in the age of sci-ence, we argue that human presencein the forest may well result in theforest’s demise. In our concern toconserve its mysteries, we guard theforest as an impenetrable place oflittle interest and even of danger toman. At the entry to a biospherereserve, a sign warns, “this is a natu-ral site that has not been exploited,these unique reserves are of excep-tional scientific interest, respectthem! Given that the forest, left toits own, is of little interest to manand that the paths can be danger-ous, access is forbidden!” (Terrasson1994, 25).

In other cultures and at othertimes, pathways through the forestwere also perceived as dangerousand forbidding, but very much arequired part of the journey in thesearch of knowledge. Aeneas wan-dered through the Avenus wood insearch of the Golden Bough thatwould permit him to descend intothe underworld, an underworld pro-tected by the Stygian forest. In thewell-known opening verses ofDante’s Divine Comedy his travelsfrom the Selva Obscura in theInferno to the Selva Antica ofparadise, begin as follows:

In the middle of our life’s path I found myself in a dark forestWhere the straight way was lost.

(Inferno 1, 1–3)

Only a long and circuitous pathallows Dante access to Paradise andto the Selva Antica, the ancientforest of an earthly paradise, anenchanted forest that “has ceased tobe a wilderness and has become amunicipal park under the jurisdic-tion of the City of God” (Harrison1992, 85).

Descartes, by contrast, insiststhat travelers lost in a forest ought“always walk as straight a line as theycan in one direction and not changecourse for feeble reason” (Harrison1992, 110). Whereas Dante’s pilgrimrequired divine assistance to escapethe forest, Descartes relies on


Figure 5. In vitro, NIP Paysage. 2001. Mathieu Casavant, France Cormier, Josée Labelle,Michel Langevin, et Mélanie Mignault, landscape architects; Installed in theInternational Garden Festival, Métis, Québec. 2001. (Photograph by Michel Laverdière,Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens)What is the future of the forest? Does it serve as a setting for recreation, a refuge for wilderness, orthe site of industrial laboratories, factories, or a supermarket?

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method to escape the random anddisordered forest environment. Hisforest refers to tradition: “the accu-mulated falsehoods, unfoundedbeliefs, and misguided assumptionsof the past” (Harrison 1992, 111). Inboth cases, knowledge and apprecia-tion of the forest is acquired alongthe forest path.

In North America, the longestand certainly one of the most cele-brated of these forest paths is theAppalachian Trail, developed as ameans of introducing the wondersof this landscape complex to theincreasingly urbanized populationof the northeastern United States.As such it serves as an outdoorlaboratory and a model of forestconservation (Simo 2003, 83–89), acontinuing and critical challenge forour times much as is was for Pinchotand Sargent many years previously.

Two recent projects, both ofwhich have strong links to the his-toric use of the forest along theupper South shore of the St. Law-rence River, illustrate the contempo-rary intricacies of the forest path.The first (Figure 7) focuses on thecinematic sequences inherent first

in driving and then in walkingthrough the forest landscape. Theproject entitled 90-0 Kilometers perhour deals with the different percep-tions that are registered while driv-ing along a winding coastal roadwith spectacular views of the majes-tic St. Lawrence River alternatingwith the closed and sheltered viewsof the forest until one arrives at theGarden Festival at Métis. Here thepedestrian changes rhythm andvisual focus. The visitor is faced witha Herculean choice: to follow a well-trodden path to the historical gar-dens or to take the less evidentforest path to the modern festivalgardens. Ariane’s cord, in the guiseof a Christo-like running fence,leads the way to the entry tents ofthe garden festival and thence tothe promenade and overlook of theSt. Lawrence River. It remains anopen question as to which of thepaths leads towards Diana andwhich to Venus.

The second project (Figure 8),À propos du Blanc, is one of a numberof projects designed to extend theimpact of the Métis garden festivalto the resident population of theregion as well as visitors to it. In thiscase, the garden proposed for thetown of Amqui along the MatapédiaRiver explores how land was appro-priated from the forest setting fromcolonial times to the present.

The design strategy consists ofweaving a path through the forest, apath highlighted by the insistent useof whitewash or white cloth locatedat the base of mature forest trees.Six gardens will be developed alongthis path, at the rate of two per yearfor the next three years, located firstin natural clearings and later furtherafield. The initial history of theregion is told in the first two of thesegardens, from the forces of glacia-tion that shaped the landscape tothe enormous efforts of man toclear the forest, creating farmlandwith fire. The color white invadesthe forest, serving to unify the expe-riences derived while movingthrough it, recalling the milestonemarkings along the old Kempt road,

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Figure 6. In vitro, NIP Paysage. 2001. (Photograph by NIP Paysage, Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens)The site plan invites the visitor to discover a visually intriguing organization of forest components that deconstructs our understanding of what mostwould consider a very familiar landscape, forcing us to question basic assumptions with respect to its use and conservation.

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the milk runs to the valley residents,even the teachings of the Ursulinenuns inscribed in white on thechalkboards of the time.

Forest ClearingsThe idea of clearings in the

forest assumes a largely continuousforest cover that shelters the floraand fauna of a viable ecosystemwithin which one finds small islandsof openness. The integrity of the for-est is subject to increasingly largeincursions until the clearing sur-rounds and defines the remainingpattern of forest fragments, theinverse of forest clearings. Thechanging relationship of forest clear-ing to forest fragment lies at the veryheart of a concern for the continuedintegrity of the forest and all that itshelters.

Clearings and forest cover playagainst each other in folklore andhistory. The sunlit clearings, enlight-enment, are contrasted to the igno-rance suggested by the broodingdarkness of the forest floor:

As an obstacle to visibility, theforests also remained an obstacleto human knowledge and science,while the forest clearing provideda window on the world. In promot-ing the revolution of critical rea-son, Socrates believed that the cityrepresented a triumphant clearingin whose sphere of enlightenmentthe shadows of the Dionysian men-ace—lodged in the forest—weredissipated. (Harrison 1992, 10, 38)

The interplay of the forest and thecity is developed throughout history,as when Romulus, born of the forest,founds the city of Rome by openingan asylum in a clearing on theCapitoline Hill. The clearings inThomas Cole’s second portrait ofThe Course of Empire: the Arcadian orPastoral State, portrays a similar scenein the New World (Figure 9).

Later, in the context of thespreading settlement across theAmerican continent, the forestbecame a source of recreation and

scenic pleasure, particularly along thefringes of the growing city. CharlesEliot’s report to the MetropolitanPark Commission of Boston con-tained all the optimism and much ofthe mystery of this view of the forestclearing. He reminded the commis-sioners that “The purpose of invest-ing public money in the purchase ofthe several metropolitan reservationswas to secure for the enjoyment ofpresent and future generations suchinteresting and beautiful scenery asthe lands acquired can supply.” Heassumed “the distant prospects willremain unchanged, because theirvery distance makes invisible thesuperficial alterations which maneffects” (Eliot 1897, 7). Little did herealize that urban growth wouldbecome so all-pervasive, or how thereach of human settlement wouldextend in the New World as else-where across the globe.

The forest clearing punctuatesthe otherwise repetitive forest coverwith points of visual interest that de-light as much as they orient the trav-eler. It serves as a deeply imbedded


Figure 7. Paysage 90-0 km/hre. VLAN Paysage; Micheline Clouard and Julie St. Arnault, landscape architects. Installed in theInternational Garden Festival, Métis, Québec. 2000. (Photograph by Atelier in situ, Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens)Vlan Paysage won the competition to develop a master plan for the International Garden Festival at Métis on a site adjacent to the well-worn and trav-eled paths of the historic gardens. The project was to be developed over a period of years, and initially, a visual strategy was required to lead the visitortowards the otherwise hidden delights of the modern experimental and ephemeral garden proposals.

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metaphor that contrasts wildnesswith civilization, clarity with mystery.In his forestry report, Charles Eliot suggested the following:

After traversing long stretches ofmonotonous coppice, to emergeinto grassy openings . . . set withoccasional spreading trees, bor-dered or framed by hangingwoods, beyond which rises perhapssome bold hill or ledge, is likecoming to a richly interesting oasisin the midst of a bare desert, savethat our desert is a close-rankedwood, and our oasis a sunny open-ing in it. (Eliot 1897, 18, 21)

He concludes that “Intricacy, variety,and picturesqueness of detail of rockand vegetation, combined withnumerous and varied openings, vis-tas, and broad prospects, must serveas the sources of interest and beautythroughout the larger part of thereservations.”

The forest clearing reflectsboth the charm and mystery, thedelight and pleasure of discoveringan opening in the forest where the

sky and sun become visible, the for-est walls provide shelter and com-fort, and the sounds and smells ofthe forest excite our memory. Suchis the feeling conveyed by the forestinstallation Solange. The project(Figure 10) stresses the appreciationof the wonders of nature throughartificial marks that celebrate thehuman spirit.

In this particular project, a gar-den competition for a summer festi-val held outside Lyon, France,designers were invited to address thetheme of perfume. To do so, ClaudeCormier wrapped sixteen thousand

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Figure 8. À propos du Blanc. Espace DRAR; Anna Radice and Patricia Lussier, landscape architects. Installed in Amqui, Québec. 2003.(Photograph by Denis Lemieux, Jardins de Métis/Reford Gardens)The forest is a living witness of the different transformations of the landscapes of the upper Gaspé peninsula. In this case, a wooded grove that oncebelonged to the Ursuline religious community in the heart of the Town of Amquai is the site of a path that runs along the Matapédia river, connectingsites of natural clearings where the landscape and cultural history of the region will be interpreted in the form of garden installations.

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silk flowers in six-meter high bandsaround a cluster of trees in a forestclearing, delimiting a specialforest precinct. Perfume was inter-preted as fantasy rather than fra-grance, silk flowers were used tocommemorate the role that silkplayed in the history and economicdevelopment of Lyon, and theovertly artificial nature of the pro-posal is intended to remind us allthat the garden, third nature, ismore a product of human endeavorthan of natural process. But ulti-mately, the installation reminds us ofthe charming fairy tales that takeplace in the forests of our youth,where gingerbread huts and othercharms awaited children as theypassed along a path that led to thesunlit clearings of the magic forest.

A far less prosaic and sanguineview of the forest clearing is con-veyed by the Sentier battu (Figure 11).It challenges us to understand andappreciate the force and impact thatthe expanding urban fringe exertson the integrity of the forest fabric.The project suggests the process ofsavage clearcutting that occurs inpreparation for site developmentand the irony of the carefully tendedspreading lawn that dresses the for-est wounds once the shelter is com-pleted. From the heights of a raisedwooden terrace or balcony, we sur-vey a synthetic plastic lawn thatscreens, but does not completelyhide, the clear-cut material below.Yet, amongst the twisted logs andtwigs along the edges of the beatenpath, new volunteer shoots emergefrom the forest floor, providingsome hope for the future, somesense of the irrepressible forces ofnature.

Forest FragmentsAs a direct result of the spread-

ing urban shadow and its conse-quent impact on the forest regimesuggested by Sentier battu, the Borealforest continues to be transformedfrom a coherent and integratedecosystem to one that is uprootedand scattered. The scale of the forestin Quebec is difficult to grasp, andextends well beyond a neat set of sta-tistics; the extent of the forest coverstretches the imagination and defies


Figure 10. Solange. Cormier, Claude, landscape architects. Installed in the woods of theDomaine de Lacroix-Laval, Lyon, France. 2003. (Photographs by Claude Cormier)The delight of arriving at a forest clearing, signaled by the sunlight on the forest floor, is accentu-ated by the garlands of flowers climbing up the tree trunks at its edge. They stand as sentinels over-seeing the festive activities below.

Figure 9. Thomas Cole. The Course of Empire: The Pastoral State. Courtesy of the New YorkHistorical Society, New York City. 1836 Oil on Canvas (100 × 161 cm).This is the second of a series of five images of the progressive corruption of the American wilderness,and the rise and fall of the urban environment replacing it. Perhaps the forest clearing in the pas-toral landscape suggests the limits of the artist’s sense of a balance of nature and humansettlement.

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any familiar calculus. Wildernesshas been defined as a land area ofalmost one million acres (fourhundred thousand hectares) withoutprominent or marked evidence ofsignificant human impact. Based onthis definition, there are no wilder-ness areas left in the eastern UnitedStates, although there are such areasin the Canadian Boreal forestsmostly in their northern reaches atsome distance from human settle-ments. The remaining forests arefragmented, incapable of supportingor sheltering wilderness.

A forest fragment is not at allcomparable to formerly continuousforest cover, “making them inade-quate habitat for many species thatdepend upon larger systems that

meet their needs for survival” (Sauer1998, 16). Patterns created by frag-mentation are very different fromthe rich and shifting patterns cre-ated by gaps resulting from manage-ment by indigenous people or fromwindfalls and other natural distur-bances. In the fragmented forest,there is no continuous forest matrixto block competing species andpredators; rather, there is a continu-ous and connected edge that givesaccess to all places. In the old-growth forest, gaps are not con-nected; it is the forest that is intact.”(Sauer 1998, 17).

The consequences of fragmen-tation are one of the central con-cerns of Leslie Sauer’s book, TheOnce and Future Forest, as it was ofJohn Evelyn’s work many centuriesago. Evelyn (1908) wondered how,“since our forests are undoubtedlythe greatest magazines of the wealthand glory of this nation; and ouroaks the truest oracles of its perpetu-ity and happiness, as being the onlysupport of that navigation whichmakes us fear’d abroad, and florishat home” (Book III, Part VII, 157),the forests of England could, onthe one hand, lie fallow in Royalpreserves “folded up in a napkin,uncultivated, and neglected whilegentlemen gained a sudden fortuneby plowing parts of their parks and

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Figure 11. Sentir battu. Groupe BGL. Jasmin Bilodeau, Sébastien Giguère et Nicolas Laverdière, designers. Installed in the InternationalGarden Festival, Métis, Québec. 2001. (Photograph by Jardins de Métis)The deceptively attractive green cloud suspended in a forest clearing quickly dissolves as the visitor realises that it can be read as a carefully manicuredlawn of green plastic chips, a product of the clear cutting and mutilated soil required to install a cabin in the woods or to accommodate the expandingshadow of urban sprawl.

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letting out their fat grounds to gar-deners.” Later, but still in England,William Gilpin considered the forestas “not just the abode of ancientoaks and wild ponies, but also theseat of English liberty and its longresistance to despotism” (Schama1995, 137). The use and abuse ofthe forest landscape was a matter ofgreat national concern, of nationalpride, and of national economicimportance; in Europe and thecolonies, it continues to be so.

A patchwork quilt is an appro-priate contemporary metaphoricalimage of what has replaced the for-est blanket of yesteryear. Accordingto one report from Global ForestWatch, 40 percent of the CanadianBoreal forest is already fragmented,but there is no definitive study ofhow much of the forest remainsintact ecologically, protected fromthe looming shadow of further frag-mentation. Of the three hundredforty million hectares that remainviable, most are in the northernboreal forests. In Quebec, only3 percent of these forests benefitfrom protection (Deglise 2003, A3).

Fragmentation suggests thegradual unraveling of the forest fab-ric, a fabric that has sustained thepeoples of Quebec prior to and dur-ing European colonization up toand including current urban activi-ties and forest practices. That theforest continues to serve as a cul-tural backdrop, even amongst theurban young, is illustrated by LesPruches, used to animate a dis-cotheque in downtown Montreal(Figure 12). The project consists ofa spiral of tree trunks that supportboxes of flowers that might other-wise be found on the floor of a for-est clearing. The dancing crowd mayvery well recall the various festivalsand celebrations that took place invillages and towns of the forest inyears gone by.

While fragmentation threatensthe integrity of the forest, it may alsosuggest opportunities to recall itshistoric role for current generations.A project proposal for the Village ofVerchères that sits on the southshore of the St. Lawrence Riversome forty miles downstream fromMontreal traces the history of

the gradual retreat of the forest, thecultivation and subsequent settle-ment of the exposed fertile floodplain, and the opportunity to re-establish, if only symbolically, theimportance of the forest and woodsof yesteryear (Philippe Poullaouec-Gonidec and Peter Jacobs 1995).

The Village of Verchères payshomage to Madeline de Verchères,a young girl who successfully de-fended her village against an Indianattack while the men were in thewoods hunting for winter provisions(Figure 13). The proposed land-scape strategy attempts, once again,to defend the village now underattack from the encroaching shadowof urbanizations spreading acrossand along the St. Lawrence FloodPlain. The landscape fabric of forestand river that once defined the Vil-lage is reinterpreted with respectto a variety of interventions that seekto integrate landscape compo-nents of natural process and of sym-bolic import into the fabric of thevillage. The object is to re-appropri-ate the landscape both physicallyand in the imagination of the villageresidents. To do so, a number oflandscape planning strategies areproposed including the attempt toreforest drainage areas and streamsin the agricultural plain that might

once again link the retreating forestedge to the village fabric and toreplant long abandoned hedge-rows that once lined the fields thatstretched from the river shore to theforest woodlots (Figure 14).

A more symbolic measure issuggested through the introductionof woodlot islands at the cornersof the village, forest fragmentsintended to recall the distant forestbut also to shelter the social activi-ties and recreation that once oc-curred in close proximity to thevillage, yet remained somewhat shel-tered from it. It was in these forestshadows that the first kiss may havebeen exchanged between younglovers, where the sweet sugar sap ofthe maple tree could be spread oncold snow to produce crisp maplesugar toffee, or simply where a fam-ily might picnic or retreat from thehectic pace of life. The forest frag-ment is charged with significanceboth as a symbolic shelter of socialactivity and recreation and as a tem-porary refuge for nature that is notsubject to the parallel lines of thefarmer’s plough.

Forest fragments may well pro-vide opportunities in support of theneed to imagine, if not actually man-age, a forest regime that is healthy,that exhibits ecological integrity asmuch as social viability. The shiftfrom forest clearing to forest frag-ment is a seemingly inexorable


Figure 12. Les Pruches. Claude Cormier and Philippe Poullaouec-Gonidec Landscapearchitects. Installed in a discotheque, St. Lawrence Street, Montréal, 1990. (Photographby André Doyon)The forest fragment plays entirely different roles and exerts entirely different impacts with respect tonatural and cultural processes. Ecologically the fragment is fragile and isolated from its resourcesupport systems; culturally it can serve as a powerful metaphor.

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trend towards the disenfranchise-ment of a storehouse of natural andcultural wealth. The inversion of theopen space of the clearing in theforest to the forest as an object sur-rounded by open space is bothsocially and ecologically significant.It is at the interface of these twoconditions, at the forest edge, thatthe dynamic and the future of theforest will continue to be played out.

Forest EdgeThe forest edge is that critical,

somewhat indeterminate, boundarythat mediates the open plain andthe broad forest cover. In Romantimes, the god of sacred boundarieswas Silvanus, deity of the outlyingwilderness. The boundaries of Respublica and Res nullius were drawn atthe edge of the undomesticatedforests, where a sylvan fringe gavethe civic space its natural bound-aries (Harrison 1992, 3, 49). MarcAntoine Laugier’s “Essai sur l’archi-tecture” (1755) proposes that thevery origin of architecture is theforest hut, while Robert Geddes’

essay “The Forest Edge” (1984)speaks of the reconstructed forest asthe architectural edge of the mod-ern city. This critical boundaryserves as well as the setting for theaspect/prospect aesthetic theory oflandscape proposed by Jay Appleton(1975).

Until recently, relatively mod-est incursions at the edge of the for-est occurred as the demand foragricultural land grew with a grow-ing population, and then, as theneed for housing stock grew at theedge of the urban fringe. To a cer-tain extent, this forest edge was thenegative or inverse expression of theHortus conclusis. Open space definesthe forest garden, rather than theforest walls that define the surround-ing wilderness. It is at this edge thatthe forest is most vulnerable, wherecertain stories have developed, inpart to defend or maintain theintegrity of the forest itself. Much of

western literature and folklore treatsthe edge of the forest as a line that,once crossed, can, and frequentlydoes, result in personal transforma-tions as well as collective culturalchange.

The forest in Aristo’s OrlandoFurioso was full of magic, monsters,knights, and strange adventures.Orlando wanders into a beautiful,idyllic, enchanted forest where, con-fronted by the protestations of lovebetween Angelica and Medoro, heloses his mind. Unable to abide thepastoral idyllic setting of Petrarch’sArcadia, a false metaphor of thetroubled times in which the warriorlived, Orlando uproots the forest.

The forest edge is, as well, wit-ness to cultural inversions; as the citybecomes sinister, the forests becomeinnocent, pastoral, diversionary,comic. The forest can be used toexpress moral outrage as at the endof Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where “themoving forest of Birnam . . . symbol-izes the forces of natural law mobiliz-ing its justice against the moralwasteland of Macbeth’s nature”

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Figure 13. A proposal for the Village de Verchères. Peter Jacobs and Philippe Poullaouec-Gonidec, landscape architects. 1995.(Photograph by PPG)The origin and sense of the village that lies along the St. Lawrence River in close proximity to the City of Montréal is intimately associated with its land-scape setting of river, plain, and forest. The project proposal suggests ways in which the spatial recall of these elements might serve to structure the villagelandscape, protecting it from contemporary urban growth much as Madeline de Verchère protected the village from attack three hundred years earlier.

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(Harrison 1992, 104). We arereminded of the moving forests,equally outraged with the “evil em-pire,” in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

A far less intellectual, but justas powerful, perspective of the forestedge is contained in the folkloreof Quebec, inhabited as it is bythe Feux Follets, or Will-o-wisps(Figure 15):

The Feux Follets can be found atthe edge of the forest on moonlessnights pursuing the late or losttraveler, dancing around them andplaying tricks, startling theirhorses into rearing and throwingtheir riders into the ditch, or

simply leading them astray intothe impenetrable cover of the for-est. They may be disciples ofLucifer himself or simply sufferingsouls performing penance. Thereis, fortunately, a simple way to dealwith these lost spirits. By sticking aneedle into a tree trunk they arediverted into their favorite pas-time, passing back and forththrough the eye of the needle,allowing the traveler time toescape. (MIM 2003, 81)

Another contemporary project, theLipstick Forest, moves the idea andmemory of the forest from the largeexpanse of the Laurentian Shield tothe context of urban Montreal(Figure 16). The project is inspiredby, and makes reference to, the adja-cent Mont-Royal, the same that wasclimbed by Jacques Cartier morethan four centuries ago. The moun-tain forest exists to this time notonly as a park, but also as the centralicon of the city itself. In the early


Figure 15. Les feux follets. Installed on thesite of Mosaïcultures InternationalesMontréal, Port of Montréal. 2003.(Photograph by MIM)This image of the “will-o-wisps” suggests theserious, yet playful, role that forest legendsplay in our understanding and sense ofattachment to the landscape settings of ouryouth and those that we may have discoveredas we explore further afield.

Figure 14. “Village of Verchères, Landscape planning strategies.” Peter Jacobs andPhilippe Poullaouec-Gonidec, landscape architects. 1995.The objective of re-appropriating the village landscape is supported by a renewed consideration ofthe need to conserve and rehabilitate the river shoreline and streams that drain the agriculturalplain, as much as the symbolic need to render the previous forest cover visible at the corners of thevillage and along the shoreline where tight columns of poplars stand sentinel along the maritimepath of modern tanker and tourist traffic.

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colonial period it was viewed as animpenetrable forest and dangerousrefuge for the nearby Indians; civi-lized and settled in the nineteenthcentury industrial city, it was por-trayed as picturesque; in the nine-teenth century it served as thedemocratic setting for the greenlungs of the city; and, currently, itoffers the site of choice for the mul-ticultural activities of a citizenry withan increasingly diverse set of tradi-tions and values. The mountain for-est has always served as the edge ofthe city even while being sur-rounded by it. Why not reinterpretthis edge in the context of the urbancore?

The Lipstick Forest is a wintergarden, sited over an undergroundexpressway, straddled between twoconcrete slabs that form the firstfloor of an international conferenceand exhibition center. To the pass-ing observer, a forest of large treessits at the edge of the thin glassplane that separates the outsidefrom the inside, the harsh winter cli-mate from the warm interior. As onewould expect during the winter, thetrees have lost their leaves and payhomage to natural process and theoccasional rigors of exceptional win-ter phenomena, such as the icestorm of 1998. The setting is any-thing but natural.

In fact, the design “parti”delights in the interplay of the natu-ral and the artificial. It is rather obvi-ous that a tree cannot take root on aconcrete slab, and the alternative ofa tropical winter garden in a north-ern climate seems somehow out ofplace, if not a tired cliché. Why notsuggest the forest in ways that areclearly artificial (Figure 17), thatpropose the reference of the forestedge as a metaphor of the transi-tions that occur in all aspects of nat-ural and artificial process? TheLipstick Forest is artificial, but notfalse. Each tree is different; each issculpted individually, floating abovethe floor and below the ceiling tostress the lack of roots. The pinkbark, chosen from a palette of lip-stick color charts may make refer-ence to Montreal’s well-known“joie de vivre” and to its thrivingcosmetics industry.

The forest edge is an idea thatcan be transported from the wilder-ness to the city and from the naturalto the artificial. It can invite entryinto the forest as a refuge or canreflect the conditions that lieoutside its boundaries. Colored

Reflections, once again located in aforest room of the Métis garden fes-tival, does both by positioning a tri-angular prism in a partially clearedforest setting. The prism, some 20feet six inches on a side, is built oftwo glass sheets that sandwich a

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Figure 16. Lipstick Forest. Claude Cormier, landscape architects. Installed in the interiorof the Montreal Congress Center. 2003. (Photograph by Claude Cormier)A reading of the forest that expands our view of its context, that questions our sense of nature, andthat challenges our view of the practice of landscape architecture.

Figure 17. Lipstick Forest. (Photograph by Claude Cormier)The forest reflects the adjacent mountain park and recalls the colors and spirit of the Montreal-based cosmetic industry. As such it questions our sense of the relationship of culture and nature, ofthe artificial and the natural.

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transparent green film. The carefullydesigned visual effect allowsobservers to look through the prismat the same time as the prismreflects the forest that surroundsthem. The effect is heightened inso-far as the interior of the prismsurrounds a few birch trees withinthe clearing, adding an additionaldimension to the reflected forestimages (Figure 18).

Colored Reflections offers thepossibility of multiple readings ofthe forest landscape. Passing visitorsmoving along the forest path maywell miss the prism altogether if theymisread the reflection of the forestin the glass walls for the forest itself,or they may read the reflection as anoverlay of the filtered view of the for-est behind the walls. They may alsocatch a glimpse of others reflectedin the mirrored wall, people watch-ing other people watching nature inthe forest. We are left to ponder thechanging and overlapping images ofthe forest, and the multiple impactsof experiencing the forest edge

directly, through a partially filteredscreen, or as a reflection of natureand of ourselves.

ConclusionWhether intentionally or not, a

group of young landscape designershave made use of the folklore andthe natural fabric of the forestas a metaphor for their project proposals. They have chosen toexplore the emotional forces thatsupport a profound attachment tothe rugged landscape of Quebecand to the forest landscape manycall home.

While they understand that theforest serves as a natural refuge, theforest is, as well, a repository of ourcollective memory and one of thecritical sources of society’s knowl-edge and wisdom. Thus the appealto conserve the forest for purely util-itarian reasons, sometimes mistak-enly called sustainable development,makes little or no sense in theabsence of the stories and legendsthat animate our appreciation for it.

It is this latter view that motivatesmany of the contemporary land-scape projects in Québec. It is thepoetics of conservation and change,rather than ecological determinismthat inspires the form, meaning andreception of many of these smalland ephemeral experiments. Aboveall, it is the dynamic of spatial poetryand natural process that characterizethe more successful examples.

William Gilpin in his “Remarkson Forest Scenery and other Wood-land Views” argued, “extensive forestsare not subject to art and that there-fore the idea of suggesting rules toalter and improve them is absurd”(Heath 1887, 305). He maintained,“Beauty is not the characteristic ofthe forest. Its peculiar distinction isgrandeur and dignity . . . the forestdistains all human culture. On it thehand of nature only is impressed.The forest like other beautifulscenes, pleases the eye; but its greateffect is to rouse the imagination”(Heath 1887, 285, 286).

It can be argued that recentgarden designs, landscape projectsfor urban parks, and even townplans such as that proposed for theVillage of Verchères, are inspired bya concern for the health and futureof the forest regime, an apprecia-tion of its beauty, and an under-standing of its fragility. They are wellreceived and often warmly embraced,not so much for their beauty butprecisely because, as William Gilpinsuggested, they address our imagina-tion through themes that resonatein the collective soul of the popula-tion to which they are addressed.

The forest that once blanketedNorth America, and still covers alarge part of Quebec, is a criticalcomponent of our consciousness,our mind set, and our culture. Theforest is embedded in the folklore,legends, and oral history of the FirstNations and as strongly, althoughdifferently, in the descendents of thecolonial settlers that first ventureddown the Saint Lawrence River fivehundred years ago. The forest hasgradually been transformed as forestclearings have become forest frag-ments, and contemporary inhabi-tants of the forest now experience alandscape setting that is radically


Figure 18. Colored Reflections. Hal Ingberg, architect. Installed in the InternationalGarden Festival, Métis, Québec. 2003. (Photograph by Robert Baronet, Jardins deMétis/Reford Gardens)The passing visitor is uncertain as to the limits of the forest edge, blurring the sense of the outsideor inside of the forest clearing. The courtyard of the prism is at the same time a forest precinctdefined by transparent walls that provide shaded views to the outside world. The site reflects themultiple layers of meaning that have always been assigned to the forest over time and acrosscultures.

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different than that of our ancestors’experience.

This sample of contemporarylandscape and garden designs inQuebec suggest that there is still astrongly felt need to maintain therole, and to repair the health of theforest as an essential aspect of ourcollective consciousness. Folkloreand modern parables are debatedand shared precisely because theyevoke a deeply felt attachment toour understanding of place. But weseldom articulate this bond, and allthe figures, graphs, and statistics thataddress the loss of biodiversity, orthe unsustainable use of the forestare quickly lost in the crush of every-day, more immediate concerns. Thestrength of the proposals of land-scape and garden design reside intheir appeal, not just to the intellec-tual concern for the future of thelandscape, but to our overwhelmingpassion to maintain the habitat wecall home.

Editor’s NoteAn earlier version of this paper was presentedby Peter Jacobs as the Annual Public Lecture,Dumbarton Oaks, Program of Garden andLandscape Studies, in Washington DC,November 20, 2003. Subsequently, it has beenedited for clarity and length appropriate toLandscape Journal.

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