Tornoto Music Garden

The Toronto Music Garden was designed by landscape architect Julie Moir Messervy in collaboration with the cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Its design is based on the First Suite for Unaccompanied Cello by J.S. Bach, which has six garden 'movements': the Prelude, the Allemande, the Courante, the Sarabande, the Menuett, and the Gigue. These are reflected in gardens of Canadian Shield boulders, a birch wood, a wildflower meadow, ornamental grasses and conifers. Julie Messervy has a particular interest in contemplative gardens trained with the eminent Japanese garden master Kinsaku Nakane in Kyoto. Goethe's wrote that 'Architecture is frozen music' and one might riposte that 'Gardens are living music' - or rather that they could be. Abstract music has a spatial quality which can inspire the design of physical space.Tom Tollefson was the architectural blacksmith for the Music Pavilion and Anne Roberts designed the Maypole.