Montréal Botanical Garden
4101, rue Sherbrooke Est, Montréal QC
CANADA, H1X 2B2
Telephone: 514 872-0607
Fax: 514 872-7955
Email: jardin_botanique@ville.montreal.qc.ca
Web site: http://www.ville.montreal.qc.ca/jardin/japonais

Ranked as one of the world's largest of its kind, the Montreal Botanical Garden has a collection of 22,000 plant species and cultivars, some thirty thematic gardens, 10 exhibition greenhouses, and much more. In all its beauty, this living museum offers a world of colors and fragrances for visitors to enjoy.

Visitors  are sure to be captivated by the colors and fragrances from around the world. With things to see such as the delightful Chinese Garden, the Japanese garden, the classically designed French garden or the woodlands of the Laurentians, the Montreal Botanical Garden is sure to please all not matter what the season. It is located just minutes from downtown Montréal, right near the Biodôme and Olympic Park.

Plants and flowers from around the world have been gathered into this common garden, offering a beautiful diversity for visitors to admire and adore. Some of the greater sections of the Montreal Botanical Garden include the Chinese Garden (Dream Lake Garden), and the famous Rose Garden.

The Chinese Garden
An authentic Chinese garden, the Dream Lake Garden, inspired by the private gardens popular in the southern Yangzi River region during the Ming dynasty, is located at the heart of Montreal Botanical Garden. Its unique and asymmetrical design was created according to a "rigorous esthetic principle". It is a place of contrast, as well as harmony. The secular principles of the Chinese art of landscape and design are expressed through the spatial organization , the pavilions' architechture, the selection of plants and the contrast of yin and yang.

The components of a Chinese garden are rich in metaphorical meaning. "A designer reproduces nature not by imitating it, but rather by interpreting it, by creating a three-dimensional portrait." Plants, water, stones and architecture are the major elements used to achieve the harmony of a Chinese garden.

Le Weizhong, a renowned architect and master landscaper came up with the concept of the garden. Thousands of pieces of material were needed to build the garden, and they were shipped from Shanghai to Montreal, courtesy of the Shanghai Institute of Landscape Design and Architecture.

The Rose Garden
Designed in 1976, the magnificent Rose Garden of the Motanical Garden consists of a collection of 10,000 roses laid out in twisting beds. New beds were added in 1992, extending as far as the Japanese Garden. A regal bronze lion sits atop a pedastal in a sea of roses, a gift from the City of Lyon to Montreal. In the heart of the garden sits a bronze statue entitled First Jewel. I represents a young girl holding a necklace, and was created in 1973 in New York by Alice Winant, a Romanian artist. The famous Rose Garden has always, and will continue to capture the breath of any visitor the Montreal Botanical Garden may bring.