Glenn Group was selected from a field of national and international landscape architecture firms to imagine a garden worthy of the nation's capital.
Proposed to occupy 14 hectares on the Central Experimental Farm Lands along the Rideau Canal, Canadensis is an initiative to create a preeminent public garden for the National Capital. Our team prepared both the master plan and the business plan — a complete vision for how the garden would be built, funded, and sustained.
The garden sets a new bar for public gardens, built on four guiding tenets — Conservation, Understanding, Stimulation, and Sustainability — with climate change as a primary focus. It draws on the long tradition of the world's great public gardens while offering a fresh perspective: engaging visitors through technology, interaction, education, and culture.
Canadensis reflects green practices at every turn, exposes visitors to world cultures through a series of embassy gardens, and marries the garden experience with new technologies that let people see a garden as they never have before. The plan was completed in 2020.
Four tenets, one garden
Conservation
Protecting and celebrating Canadian flora and biodiversity as a living, evolving collection.
Understanding
Education and interpretation that connect visitors to plants, place, and a changing climate.
Stimulation
Interaction, technology, and world culture that make each visit immersive and new.
Sustainability
Green practices on display — a garden that models the future it advocates for.
A garden for the National Capital
Set along the Rideau Canal — a UNESCO World Heritage Site — Canadensis was conceived as a destination equal to the great botanic gardens of the world, yet unmistakably Canadian in character.
The master plan weaves display gardens, water features, and cultural landscapes across the Central Experimental Farm, framing a year-round experience that shifts with each season and draws visitors back again and again.
Culture, technology & a fresh perspective
A central conservatory and plaza anchor the garden, surrounded by embassy gardens that introduce visitors to world cultures through planting, design, and story.
Interactive and technology-driven experiences reimagine what a garden visit can be — layering interpretation, play, and discovery onto the horticultural collection so the garden educates as vividly as it delights.
Every season, a different garden
A garden that lets visitors see a garden as never before.The Canadensis Vision
Built on engagement
Delivering a plan of this ambition meant listening widely. The process incorporated broad-based public engagement, stakeholder interviews, and a series of presentations to the National Capital Commission, the Department of Agriculture, and Parks Canada.
The result is more than a design — it is a master plan and business plan that gives the Ottawa Botanical Garden Society a credible, fundable roadmap to realize a national garden for generations to come.