Oct 29, 2015
AAS Announces Winners of 2015 Landscape Design ContestSource: All-America Selections

Each year, All-America Selections sponsors a contest for its nearly 200 display gardens to encourage new and exciting landscaping ideas using AAS Winners. This year's theme was "Geometry in the Garden."

Each year, All-America Selections (AAS) sponsors a contest for its nearly 200 display gardens to encourage new and exciting landscaping ideas using AAS Winners.

This contest is a landscape design contest using AAS Winners announced in the last five years with the option to incorporate more than 80 years worth of past AAS Winners.

The 2015 contest theme was: “Geometry in the Garden.”

The 2015 winning gardens are:

Category I: fewer than 10,000 visitors per year

First Place Winner: Kishwaukee College, Malta, Illinois. The Kishwaukee College Horticulture Department used the Landscape Design Contest as an opportunity to collaborate with the Mathmatics Department to create a display around the theme, “Whats Your Angle?” The beds themselves are a range of geometric shapes. Within each bed they created a geometric theme including circumference, diameter, octagon, perpendicular lines, parallel lines, radius, perimeter, right triangles and trapezoid. The judges felt this multi-discipline effort and excellent use of the theme produced a fantastic visual effect. But the gardens were not just pretty! They were used during the growing season by various student clubs and and departments for projects in horticulture, math, photography, creative writing, biology and early childhood education.
Second Place *TIE* Winner: Pima County Cooperative Extension, Tucson, Arizona.
Second Place *TIE* Winner: University of Wisconsin Spooner Ag Research Station, Teaching and Display Garden, Spooner, Wisconsin.
Third Place Winner: Kenosha County Center Demonstration Garden, Bristol, Wisconsin.
Honorable Mention, “Best Garden Visibility”: Meredith Public Library, Meredith, New Hampshire.
Honorable Mention, “Best Walkable Design” Garden: William Dam Seeds Unlimited, Dundas, Ontario, Canada.
Honorable Mention, “Best Community Involvement” Garden: St. Louis Community College-Meramec Horticulture Department, St. Louis, Missouri.
Honorable Mention, “Best Community Involvement” Garden: Parker F. Scripture Botanical Gardens, Oriskany, New York.

Additional Honorable Mention Awards were bestowed upon:

Breckenridge Endowment Farm and Display Garden, Twin Falls, Idaho
Cutler Botanic Gardens, Binghamton, New York
Jennings Park, Washington State University Master Gardener Demonstration Gardens, Marysville, Washington

Category II: 10,001 100,000 visitors per year

First Place Winner: Noelridge Park Gardens, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. This garden had it allgreat garden design, props, publicity and community involvement. This years garden display was a collaboration of the local parks department, Goodwill and the Friends of Noelridge. As a result, the garden was host to many groups, including a photography event and garden tour. The participants of the Goodwill Dayhab program assisted in planting and maintaining the creative designs, and those participants were able to take home some great AAS-winning vegetables, too.
Second Place Winner: Mississippi State University Truck Crops Experiment Station, Crystal Springs, Mississippi.
Third Place Winner: Le Jardin des Graminées, Jardin Daniel A. Seguin, Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada.
Honorable Mention, “Best First-Time Entry” Garden: Idaho Botanical Garden, Boise, Idaho.
An additional Honorable Mention Award was given to Boone County Arboretum, Union, Kentucky.

Category III: Over 100,000 visitors per year

First Place Winner: Norseco at the Botanical Garden of Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Winning an Honorable Mention in 2014, Norseco knocked it out of the park for First Place in 2015 with a fantastic interpretation of the geometry theme and stunning displays. The triangular flower bed was entirely separated diagonally with a wide grass path for better viewing from all sides. Inside the triangle visitors could see other planted shapescircles, squares and triangles. The vegetable beds incorporated both color and textural contrasts. And if it was ever doubted that lettuce could be pretty, the red and green lettuce bed put that question to rest!
Second Place Winner: Boerner Botanic Gardens, Hales Corners, Wisconsin.
Third Place Winner: State Botanical Garden of Georgia, Athens, Georgia.

For more information about each of the winners, rules and judging criteria, visit the AAS website.