All-America Selections announces winners of landscape design contest

The Rotary Botanical Gardens won first place in the

100,000 visitors a year category. DOWNERS GROVE, IL – Three years ago, All-America Selections (AAS) launched a new contest for almost 200 Display Gardens to encourage new and exciting landscaping ideas with AAS Winners. The success of the program has been beyond expectations and continues to grow and impress every year. This year's contest asked participants to expand on a theme of using containers in the landscape.

This contest is a landscape design contest incorporating AAS Winners, past and present. Each garden is responsible for creating and executing the design, generating publicity surrounding the contest then submitting the photos, proof of publicity and an overall description of their design. All-America Selections is extremely pleased with not only the number of gardens that participated but also the broad range of garden types: large and small public gardens, seed companies, community gardens, master gardener programs and university gardens. All-America Selections salutes all the gardens and their impressive efforts to produce an attractive display of AAS Winners.

The rules were fairly simple:

1. The 2014 contest theme was: “Incorporating Containers into the Landscape.”
2. Entry form must list the AAS Winners incorporated into the design.
3. A minimum of 50 percent of the total landscaped area must be AAS Winners and labeled with the variety name, AAS Winner designation and if possible, use the AAS logo.
4. Entry form must include a written description of the design in 100 words or less.
5. Nine photographs of each garden must be submitted in digital form.
6. Local publicity is expected and will be part of the criteria for judging.
7. Contest is open to current year plantings only, not previous year displays.

There were three categories, based on number of visitors to that garden in one year:
Category I: fewer than 10,000 visitors per year
Category II: 10,001 – 100,000 visitors per year
Category III: Over 100,000 visitors per year

All-America Selections recognizes and thanks the contest judges who are industry experts in the field of horticulture and landscaping:

Jeff Gibson, Landscape Business Manger, Ball Horticultural Company
Bruce Hellerick, Senior Horticulture Specialist, The Brickman Group
Susan Schmitz, Trials and Education Manager, Ball Horticultural Company
Barbara Wise, author and Director of Floriculture, Landscape Services, Inc.

To view photos and complete profiles of all of the winners, visit the AAS website. 

Category I: fewer than 10,000 visitors per year

First Place Winner: University of Wisconsin Spooner Ag Research Station, Teaching and Display Garden, Spooner, Wisconsin. “Down on the Farm” was the theme for this Display Garden, celebrating family farmers who survived through hard work and ingenuity. Using salvaged typical household items, they organized and planted garden rooms then filled and interspersed those items with AAS Winners to provide a riot of color. Judges gave this garden high rankings because of the number of AAS Winners used along with the unique props that helped tell an educational story. Then to top it off, Spooner did a fantastic job of spreading the word among their local community via Social Media, radio, newspapers, their own website, e-newsletters and with the University of Wisconsin’s Extension programs.
Second Place Winner: Noelridge Park Gardens, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Third Place Winner: Purdue Extension Tippecanoe County Display & Idea Gardens, Lafayette, Indiana. 

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

First Place Winner: The Arboretum - State Botanical Garden of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky. Located next to the University of Kentucky’s All-America Selections trial bed, this display made great use of the 2014 container theme. With multiple large, square containers lining the main walkway, and numerous other containers positioned in strategic spots, thirty four AAS Winners gracefully filled the containers and borders with glorious color. Adding edibles to the garden showed how containers, edibles and flowers can seamlessly work in harmony in a well-designed garden.

Second Place Winner: Jardin Daniel A Séguin, Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec.

Category III: Over 100,000 visitors per year

First Place Winner: Rotary Botanical Gardens, Janesville, Wisconsin. Rotary knocked another one out of the ballpark with this year’s “Pollinator’s Paradise” theme using almost 90 AAS Winner varieties and repurposed containers for an overall earth-friendly theme. The contest was promoted in the garden’s blog an amazing 17 times, in addition to radio show talks, press releases, local garden magazine stories and more. Judges raved about the creatively designed short, medium and tall containers and the excellent use of color in three separate ways: drifts in the landscape, in the many containers and as solitary specimen varieties.
Second Place Winner: Denver Botanic Gardens, Denver, Colorado.

Third Place *TIE* Winner: Royal Botanical Gardens, Burlington, Ontario. 

Third Place *TIE* Winner: State Botanical Garden of Georgia, Athens, Georgia.

The criteria and final score weighting were:
• 25% of the score was based on the quantity of AAS Winner varieties used and signage designating them as such
• 20% of the score was based on the overall attractiveness of landscape design
• 20% of the score was based on the creative use of AAS Winners in the design
• 25% of the score was based on any promotion of the display to local media and garden visitors/members
• 10% of the score was based on photo quality and design description/explanation

Information and image courtesy of All-America Selections.