The objective of the Functional and Technical Development Program (FDP) for the Montreal Botanical Garden’s ring road is to contribute to making the Botanical Garden a place of discovery, learning and appreciation of the plant collections by minimizing everything that deteriorates this direct relationship between humans and nature.
As the main axis of circulation and operation of the Botanical Garden, for visitors and for the maintenance of horticultural activities, the reflection on the ring road is the first preparatory step for the drafting of the new master plan of the Botanical Garden which must accompany their actions until its 100th anniversary in 2031.
Momentum collaborated with BC2 and was commissioned to collect and analyse data on visitor and operational movements that will inform the design of facilities to improve the the visitor experience and reduce conflicts with operations. Our preliminary recommendations were based on a series of field visits as well as interviews with the Botanical Garden’s teams and indicated, with the help of maps and diagrams, the routes most frequently used by them.
As a follow-up to interviews conducted by Momentum with the Garden’s teams, a quantitative analysis of the movements of visitors and operational vehicles was undertaken using GPS chips distributed to visitors and employees during the summer of 2021. The data collected made it possible to identify the busiest trails and conflicts with operational vehicles. A questionnaire also provided a portrait of the visitors’ typology and their typical routes.