In the arboretum of the Montréal Botanical Garden, a chair made of brass and steel is placed in the centre of an enclosure made of stainless steel formed in a lace of leaf motifs echoing those that might be found in the garden. The seat of the chair is decorated with 12 arrows in the positions of clock numbers.

The presence of the artwork in this place produces an encounter between art and nature. Un jardin à soi creates its own space for meditation and contemplation in a contained area. It offers visitors who sit in it a moment of privacy and solitude and encourages them to take an artistic look at what is around them. Sensitive to the integration of his artworks with the site where they are exhibited, Goulet summarizes the complex relationship between Un jardin à soi and its environment:

“The small space does not compete with
the space of the garden,
but summarizes its charm and use.
Its always-open gate and the openwork grillwork
make it a friendly, welcoming place.”
– Goulet, inauguration speech, 2011 (our translation)

Un jardin à soi has an unusual history. The work is the result of an incident that affected another of the artist’s works of public art. On 7 May 1995, the poem-chair “Les hauts et les bas” in Les Leçons singulières, an artwork in Place Roy in the Plateau-Mont-Royal Borough, was stolen. In 1998, having not been able to recover the piece, the Ville decided to commission a new one to keep the artwork’s integrity. When a resident finally found the original chair in 2007, Goulet was asked to propose a new artwork integrating it.