Eleven Outaouais municipalities competing for Quebec's top greening honour

Tashi Farmilo

Eleven municipalities across the Outaouais are participating in the Fleurons du Québec program, a provincial horticultural rating system that scores communities on the quality of their green spaces and publicly visible landscaping, with the aim of driving sustained environmental improvement across Quebec.

The program, founded in 2006, dispatches trained classifiers to assess participating municipalities. The rating system, modelled on hotel stars, runs from one to five fleurons, with one indicating a community in the early stages of horticultural development and five signalling exceptional achievement across every evaluated domain. More than 300 municipalities currently hold a rating, covering close to 40 per cent of the province's population.

The Outaouais municipalities enrolled in the program are Blue Sea, Bouchette, Duhamel, L'Ange-Gardien, Maniwaki, Messines, Montebello, Ripon, Sainte-Thérèse-de-la-Gatineau, Val-des-Bois, and Val-des-Monts. Val-des-Monts, which earned four fleurons in 2023, recently renewed its membership for a further three years and will welcome classifiers in the summer of 2026, with results to be announced that fall.

During each visit, classifiers examine 60 per cent of a municipality's territory, assessing everything visible to the public across five scored domains. The municipal domain, covering parks and publicly managed spaces, carries the heaviest weight. The residential domain is also substantial, meaning the condition of private properties and front gardens feeds directly into a municipality's overall score. Schools, hospitals, and places of worship are assessed under the institutional domain, while commercial and industrial properties are evaluated separately. Community initiatives tied to sustainable development complete the picture, with composting programs, community gardens, and the protection of mature trees all factoring in. Points across all five domains total 1,050.

The benefits of participation extend well beyond a sign at the town limits. Municipalities that hold a fleurons rating tend to see improvements in residents' quality of life and civic pride, greater appeal to outside investors and entrepreneurs, and increased tourist traffic, as the label is widely recognized by travellers across the country. Each participating municipality also receives a detailed professional report following every visit, outlining strengths and areas for improvement.

Annual Reconnaissance awards recognize standout projects in four categories: urban agriculture, greening, resident mobilization, and remarkable beautification. Outaouais communities have featured among the recipients in recent years. Maniwaki has been honoured for a project incorporating recycled tires into an urban agriculture initiative, for the use of locally emblematic wood in a landscaping project, and for integrating public art into a planted urban setting. L'Ange-Gardien received recognition for the revitalization of the riverbank at the Champboisé site.