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Look for Contemporary Fare and Lots of Lighting at Salon Art + Design

Serban Ionescu with his powder-coated metal get the job done, which includes a sculpture to be demonstrated by R + Enterprise at Salon Art + Structure in New York


Joe Kramm

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Utah to Offer Cash for Replacing Lush Lawns with Desert Tolerant Landscapes / Public News Service

Starting up this week, the condition is using applications for a system to pay out up to $1 greenback a square foot of turf to swap h2o-guzzling grass with drought-resistant landscaping.

Michael Sanchez, General public Information Officer with the state Division of Water Assets explained cultivating a lush, environmentally friendly lawn in Utah’s bone-dry weather is a main h2o waster.

“We do live in a semi-arid point out,” Sanchez stated. “As you know, Utah has a distinctive landscape than something like Kentucky, where by you have issues like bluegrass just about everywhere. It is just matching our landscapes to wherever we basically live.”

According to information from the Division of Drinking water Methods, Utah’s technique of reservoirs ended the 2022 h2o calendar year at just 36{6d6906d986cb38e604952ede6d65f3d49470e23f1a526661621333fa74363c48} capacity. Officers said while Utah experienced a much better-than-regular snow pack this past time, it wasn’t ample to preserve up with the state’s escalating need
for water.

The Utah Legislature accredited a $5-million dollar expenditure to fund a statewide grass-elimination rebate program. Members will have a yr to finish their landscaping venture, which contains getting rid of the old turf and changing it with drought-resistant vegetation authorised for their section of the state. Sanchez reported swapping out the turf even in compact places can deliver considerable cost savings.

“Just based mostly on a quarter-acre large amount,” Sanchez explained, “the amount of money of h2o made use of on that great deal is about 3,000 gallons with each and every watering. So just moving to something much less drinking water-intense could be a little something that could help save a ton of water.”

The state is starting up this drop with a pilot program in Washington County, like residents in St. George, Washington, Santa Clara, and Ivins, but it will be absolutely implemented next spring.

Comparable turf-removing applications have been profitable in neighboring states, exactly where metropolitan areas this sort of as Scottsdale and Las Vegas have swapped millions of sq. feet of grass for drinking water-successful landscapes to help save billions of gallons of drinking water.&#13
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By embracing the natural landscape, a barren yard turns into an eco-friendly outdoor retreat | News, Sports, Jobs

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Deb Caswell, Lanikeha home-owner, stands higher than her backyard garden that features indigenous drought-tolerant crops, drip irrigation and other LID (Low-Impact Structure and Improvement) aspects these kinds of as bioswales to handle runoff and cut down pollution. Photo BY LIZ FOOTE.

KAANAPALI – When Debra Caswell purchased a barren 1-third-acre ton in Lanikeha above Kaanapali, creating a property wasn’t her best priority. “I required a property to mature a backyard,” said Caswell. When she bought the eco-friendly gentle to begin construction, she quickly moved her mass of vegetation – currently expanding in anticipation at her then-apartment – to her new house.

Her eyesight for the outside was equivalent to that of her now three-bed room, a person-tale residence that was made to catch the trades: it needed to embrace the all-natural landscape. Exclusively, she required a lower-water landscape that highlighted primarily indigenous crops.

The initially action was preparing her gardens – all 4 – in accordance to the route of the sun. The brilliant, west-experiencing back garden is for edibles, like Molokai sweet potatoes, squash and peppers. The south is for vegetation that can just take the warmth, this sort of as ma’o (Hawaiian cotton), kokio keokeo (white hibiscus), kokio ula (purple-orange hibiscus) and a hedge of a’ali’i (shrub). Alongside the east lies a steep slope, absolutely sunken from the entrance street, which Caswell turned into her serenity backyard garden.

“The space is shielded from the wind and pretty calming,” she reported. Below, trees like dwarf mango, keahi and hau offer a shaded cover. Winds from the northeast roll as a result of the north back garden, fingering via kupukupu ferns, green and pink ti plants.

The diversity of the outside places are like Caswell’s private compass. “When I was youthful, I made a dedication to myself that anywhere I dwell, I would have a location to go according to my temper,” she stated. “If I have to have sunshine, I go south. For tranquil, it’s the north. To experience cloistered, I go east. If I’m hungry, I head west.”

Deb Caswell (right) and West Maui Ridge to Reef Initiative Watershed and Coastal Administration Coordinator Tova Callender take a look at Caswell’s north-dealing with garden in her Lanikeha home, though standing in a bioswale that serves as a sustainable aspect developed to capture and filter storm-water runoff to avert flooding and pollution.

Navayo Caiserman, operator of West Maui Garden & Landscape, assisted Caswell put her thoughts into action. “Usually, I have a vision for the design,” reported Caiserman. “But Deb knew precisely what she wished. I steered her in the ideal way on selected aspects, but this was obviously her garden, her undertaking.” The venture took two months, and Caswell acquired her hands dirty with the crew, digging together with of them.

A person component served as a new undertaking for them both: two 50-foot-prolonged, two-foot-large bioswales that run along the north and south-experiencing sides of the assets. Nevertheless they glance and functionality like loose gravel pathways, the bioswales capture drinking water runoff and allow for it to slowly but surely percolate into the floor, equivalent to how a native forest catches rain and attracts water into the aquifer. “When we experienced our big rains very last spring, all of the drinking water was captured in the bioswales. It was a good results,” she spelled out.

Other water-conserving tricks include things like nixing sprinklers and opting for a drip procedure that runs for only 15 minutes every single other working day. Drip lines even drinking water the two-foot by six-foot swathe of garden built for her Chihuahua-Poodle blend, Parker. “Most persons told me to count on an original h2o invoice of $500 a month as my yard acquired underway,” reported Caswell, who admits to taking prolonged showers. “My major invoice has been $88 so considerably.”

A person of the factors for her minimal bill, claimed Caiserman, is that she used the correct vegetation in the proper spots. “Getting that Hana fashion of landscaping on West Maui involves a great deal of effort and hard work,” he said. “You’re going to require a lot of water and fertilizer, and when you mix that with our West Maui solar, the total of growth and ongoing upkeep can be large.” The two Caiserman and Caswell are swift to point out that a native back garden doesn’t indicate you have to exclude your preferred vegetation. For case in point, if you want pink ginger, put a few, not dozens, on the shady side of the household.

In the finish, Caiserman stated he learned a great deal from the challenge, and he’s heading to use his new techniques on other positions. “The coolest portion about Deb’s landscaping is that it price tag less to do, expenses significantly less to sustain and charges our island a good deal less assets,” he reported.

For Caswell, she finds gratification in simplicity. “Sometimes, I glance out and watch Monarch butterflies sit on my crown flowers and think, we made a room that honors this land and has lifestyle. Now that’s what I discover most critical.”

For people intrigued in understanding a lot more about sustainable landscaping practices, West Maui Kumuwai coordinates an Ocean-Friendly Landscaping Application and maintains a listing of companies on its internet site that have taken a pledge to adhere to sustainable landscaping methods. Ocean-Friendly Landscapers are supplied with internet marketing products to share with clients and receive exposure by means of the program’s media endeavours. To day, taking part businesses consist of A Nutt Nurseries, E’Scapes, Kaanapali Functions Association, MauiScapes LLC, Mel’s Lawn Company, SGS Hawaii, West Maui Garden and Landscape, and ZELM (Zero Emission Landscape Maintenance).

As aspect of a new project to endorse sustainability in West Maui and emphasize the link of landscaping techniques to the wellbeing of the coral reef, West Maui Kumuwai is especially hunting for Honokowai condo properties’ landscaping service vendors to sign up for the Ocean-Friendly Landscaping program. For extra data, or to be a part of, check out westmauikumuwai.org/methods/landscape-associates/, e-mail WestMauiKumuwai@gmail.com or call Campaign Supervisor Liz Foote at (808) 669-9062 or 283-1631.

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Manage Holiday Season Stress With These Home Design And Technology Strategies

“The holiday time is more durable than other times of the 12 months and has been pointed out to be more annoying,” states Dr. Ashley Zucker, a psychiatrist at Kaiser Permanente in Fontana, California. “Some of the most popular will cause are money strain, emotion around-scheduled, and amplified pressures at get the job done to get points accomplished by the end of the year.”

Anxiety Notes

“Stress is your body’s response to serving to you deal with stress. A compact amount of money can in fact be valuable and can improve your efficiency and consciousness,” Zucker describes, but as well a lot or also long lasting can make present mental overall health concerns even worse. “Stress has also been linked to numerous physical conditions these types of as heart condition, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), elevated blood sugar, lowered immune method, belly ulcers and health concerns,” she cautions. It can also suggest resorting to harmful coping mechanisms like liquor and medications.

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Younger ladies from 18 to 34 and males aged 356 and more mature were much more probably to report strain completely overwhelming them, Zucker shares from a modern American Psychological Association survey. Inflation, finances and criminal offense, all of which can truly feel more current through the vacation time, ended up said by respondents as “significant results in of pressure.”

Pressure Launch

We are not entirely helpless to handle these stressors, significantly in our household environments. The cliché made use of to be “Every man’s home is his castle.” Today’s corollary must be “Every guy, girl and child’s dwelling is their refuge.” Property ought to be a put of relaxed, respite and escape from the pressures of the outside world. It does not often appear so as those pressures barge in – normally by means of our electronics.

“Screens in our bedrooms, and as a consistent in our life, have been proven to impact sleep,” Zucker factors out. Element of that outcome is their melatonin-blocking blue light-weight. Portion of it is their grip on our ideas. “It can be useful to make confident your private spaces have some purely natural daylight, as this can support minimize strain and enhance serotonin generation,” she suggests.

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If purely natural light is not an selection, the psychiatrist suggests shiny synthetic gentle. “Adding artwork, crops or other décor that would make you happy can also be handy in boosting temper,” she shares. Art depicting organic scenes and décor created of all-natural products – regarded as biophilic – have been proven to have psychological wellbeing added benefits too.

When you’re not sleeping, bathing or doing work, you are most likely spending your house time in shared areas like the kitchen, residing or dining place. “Probably the most significant issue you can do to decrease anxiety relevant to shared spaces is to lower muddle,” Zucker advises.

Litter can produce pressure, (as effectively as supplying far more areas for dust to mature and create respiratory hazards). The psychiatrist suggests acquiring a area for each relatives member to retail outlet their equipment to lower clutter in shared spaces. “For example, obtaining a bin for every baby to place their shoes in, or a hook for their backpack, can help ensure that every little thing has its area.” (This can also reduce journey hazards, serving to avoid an really nerve-racking unexpected emergency area go to.)

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Technological innovation Aids

Engineering gets a lot of blame when it arrives to developing or introducing anxiety in our life. But it can – and need to be – managed for healthier results. “One of the easiest items to do is to setup guard rails and ‘rules’ for your products in your dwelling,” implies clever property technological know-how professional Ian Bryant, senior job manager for Leading SAV in Jackson, Wyoming.

He suggests placing your individual gadgets to evening method before in the evening to reduce exterior influences and support keep you focused on winding down. More recent routers and solutions can turn off obtain to outdoors media so the entire household can wind down jointly, he shares. “Work with your custom made installer, or if you are a DYI individual, start off programming your lights to enter into dimmer degrees and warmer colours as the evening progresses.”

Technologies can be a assist to your wellbeing far too. Kaiser Permanente, realizing the dangers pressure offers, features three totally free self-care applications for associates to use at dwelling and calming functions for the public at its strain administration web site. Good residence technological know-how expert, Bryant notes that in addition to making use of your devices’ do not disturb attributes for developing uninterrupted time, and self care applications, you can also use engineering to bring nature indoors.

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That could be giving the calming seems of birds, the pounding of surf, the light whoosh of wind in the trees or horses neighing employing your home’s audio technique. Your screens can also display screen character scenes. “Why not have pictures of the outdoors enjoying on in the qualifications although you’re dwelling and not utilizing them?” Bryant indicates. “You can go 1 phase even further and have different kinds of video clips playing at distinct periods of working day to help mimic the outside the house atmosphere, especially in rooms with minimal exterior exposure.”

Lighting

Incorporating human centric lights – also known as circadian lighting – into your area is another recommendation Bryant features to improve your home’s probable for introducing serenity, describing it as “the capability to use the lights technology in your house to mimic the gentle of the sunlight, with coloration variations and gentle intensities for the time of working day, time of yr and place.” HCL can also enable your slumber.

Immersion

Searching toward the next 5 a long time, the technologist sees immersion remedy rooms emerging as a household development. “These rooms will be used for multimedia, but also for complete isolation, meditation and immersion into regardless of what gets you to a calmer place.” He sees them incorporating audio and movie, sound isolation from the rest of the residence and, at some point, tailored aromatherapy. Put together, he notes, these will personalize a serenity room for each individual person consumer in the convenience of their possess dwelling.

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Pointing to just one of these immersion place capabilities, Bryant touts the importance of sound isolation right now. “There is screening displaying the beneficial results of excellent acoustics in areas, (personalized and general public),” he observes. “A room with negligible sound floor can have tremendous abilities for meditation tactics, generating it as basic as sitting in the place to serene people today.”

Private Room

With a home whole of friends, carving out a tranquil house for yourself can be challenging, but it is essential. “It does not have to be renovation of an overall place,” declares New York-based interior designer and Feng Shui expert Marina Umali. “It can be your favored chair or a part of the area with a little area to unwind.” (This is vital calendar year-spherical, she notes, but absolutely important all through the frantic holidays.)

For bathrooms, she implies developing a spa-like ecosystem by including a steam shower or even one thing as modest as a experience steamer if a shower redo is not doable. For dwelling places of work, a relaxed seat for reading through with wonderful artwork can make a corner of serenity. “Display only images and art that give you a good sensation and just take away just about anything that brings back lousy recollections,” the designer suggests. (This might necessarily mean purging goods that evoke difficult moments, even if they have long family history.)

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Crops are wonderful in any space if they’re simple to preserve, the designer adds. If plants aren’t an option for your area, contemporary citrus fruits can include brightness and fragrance to a place and refreshing flowers are fantastic, she indicates. “Even the most straightforward and smallest bouquet of flowers can do a great deal for a space,” Umali notes.

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“Humans, as advanced and reliant on our technological innovation as we are, however have a straight line to mother nature imbedded in our DNA,” Bryant responses. “Finding methods to both convey the outdoors in or get exterior is the least difficult and ideal way to cut down pressure and create serenity.” We can use the electricity of technology to aid that, and to make meditation and physical exercise less complicated at residence, he notes.

“Our residences mirror us and we are mirrored in our residences,” Umali provides. “No make a difference how serene we might layout a house for ourselves or somebody else, how we act in direction of ourselves and many others will influence our serenity, our point out of currently being and of these all over us.”

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AUTHOR’S Note:

Contributors Bryant, Umali and Zucker will be sharing their anxiety management insights in an hour-lengthy Clubhouse dialogue tomorrow afternoon (November 2, 2022) at 4 pm Jap/1 pm Pacific. You can sign up for this WELLNESS WEDNESDAYS discussion listed here. If you’re not able to go to, you can capture the recording via Clubhouse Replays here or the Gold Notes design and style weblog here subsequent Wednesday.

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Winners of the “Best Ever” 2022 AAS Display Garden Landscape Design Challenge


DOWNERS GROVE, IL – All-America Selections’ 2022 Landscape Design Challenge certainly struck a chord with this year’s theme. AAS asked their Display Gardens to use their AAS Winning flowers and plants in and around a theme of “Games in the Garden” and the gardens certainly produced! The excitement was palpable as each garden described how they came up with their ideas and how they executed them for their garden visitors. As several gardens stated, “This was the best theme ever!”

For the challenge, AAS provided the gardens with recent AAS Winner seeds and plants. The gardens had the option to also incorporate older AAS Winners in their design to illustrate the theme. Gardens were encouraged to generate publicity and hold events to share the story of All-America Selections and AAS Winners.

Gardens are divided into three categories based on the number of visitors per 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 Manager, Ball Horticultural Company

Ron Cramer, Retired, Sakata Ornamentals and AAS Former President

Barbara Wise, Sales and Marketing Manager, Crescent Garden

A complete collection of photos of all contest entrants can be found on the All-America Selections website.

AAS is proud to announce the following winning gardens from the 2022 Design Challenge:

Category III: Over 100,000 visitors per year

First Place Winner: Boerner Botanical Gardens, Hales Corner, Wisconsin

As always, Boerner’s excitement for the AAS Display Garden Challenge shows through their design process and resulting ideas. To demonstrate this year’s theme of “Games in the Garden” they made dominoes with the ‘spots’ being an AAS Winner plant (seen in photo above). This vision was achieved by taking old cabinet doors and painting them, drilling holes in them, and placing a single plant of Zinnia Profusion Red/Yellow Bicolor in them. It is a visitor favorite! The other games were a chess board made by using Gypsophila Gypsy White and Dianthus Ideal Violet. By visiting the garden’s prop closet, they found giant dice, Pokémon balls, a Jenga stack, Monopoly board pieces, Scrabble tiles and a Game of Life Spinner to finish off the games collection. Vertical elements were added by using a trellis where Bean Seychelles grew. Finally, 12 x 12-inch pieces of plywood were painted in primary colors to create steppingstones that appeared to look like a standard game board. A total of 36 different AAS Winners were showcased within the games and beds.

Second Place Winner: State Botanical Garden of Georgia, Athens, Georgia.

The State Botanical Garden of Georgia has continued to use the AAS Landscape Design Challenge as an opportunity for UGA students to work in designing and installing a landscape. This year, a student worker organized and facilitated a charrette with students, volunteers, and garden staff to discuss ideas for this year’s theme. The design came from a conglomeration of ideas and signifies half a color-wheel like a spin-the-wheel feature in games such as Twister, Life, Candy Land and others. The lead student also designed a new sign displaying “What’s in Bloom” as seen in the above photo. The “What’s in Bloom” sign is a feature that they will adapt and reuse for seasonal color beds in the future.
Category II: 10,001 – 100,000 visitors per year

First Place Winner: Domaine Joly-De Lotbinière, Sainte-Croix, Quebec

Domaine Joly’s horticulture staff wanted to find a way children could play in the garden while also learning about plants. Taking inspiration from the talking flowers in the original Alice in Wonderland, they created a plan. First, they created a “family portrait” of the AAS Winners all together. Then they created a child’s coloring page based on that portrait. Garden staff wrote a short story about a clumsy gardener who mixed up all the AAS Winner seeds when sowing them then asked the children to help find the Winners in the garden. Each AAS Winner was represented as a person describing itself so the child could easily learn, identify and remember them. Each description included the flower color and stated, “I’m a Winner!” All the children who visited the garden were given a copy of the story and coloring page so they could play the game and leave with their own piece of artwork. Both children and adults were spotted playing the game and loving the experience.

Second Place Winner: Purdue Extension-Marion County Demonstration Garden, Indianapolis, Indiana

Purdue Extension Master Gardener volunteers worked with the local Purdue University Extension office to execute this year’s theme. A variety of games and other challenges were positioned throughout the garden and along garden pathways. AAS Winners were directly incorporated into the games with some of the most popular games being: Spin the Wheel, Dart ball, Tic-tac-toe, Checkers and Kerplunk. The “Spin the Wheel” games were used to help visitors find some of the new AAS Winners in the garden. Eleven new Winners were featured, each had a photo with a brief description on the wheel. Dart ball used a target and plastic golf balls that were covered with strips of hook and loop. The target was placed in the middle of the vertical garden where Petunia Evening Scentsation and Ornamental Pepper NuMex Easter were planted as shown in the photo above. Other games included Tic-tac-toe and checkers where AAS Winning tomatoes were used as game pieces! One adult remarked while playing checkers, “This is a lot more fun than I thought it would be.”

Third Place Winner: Horticultural Art Society Demonstration Garden, Colorado Springs, Colorado.   

The “Games in the Garden” contest was perfect for this garden, allowing them to showcase the AAS Winners via activities in their Children’s Garden. 2022 was the 60th Anniversary for Horticulture Arts as a community demonstration garden so it was perfect timing to reflect and share the history of what the gardens have provided to the community. During the celebration, musicians played amongst the AAS Winners while children and families participated in tic tac toe using AAS plants as game pieces. Participants used coloring books (that focused on water wise gardening) and a scavenger hunt (that incorporated locating special and unusual trees, statues of butterflies, dragonflies, the Caretaker and a pollinator house) to truly experience the games in the garden while enjoying and identifying AAS Winners.    

Category I: fewer than 10,000 visitors per year  

First Place Winner: Lee College Horticulture Program, Huntsville, Texas.

Let the “Games” begin! This year’s challenge brought people together to have fun, enjoy one another’s company and enjoy game-inspired landscapes featuring AAS Winning plants. The student landscapes had two distinct groups of game-themes: Classics and Contemporary.

In the Classics group, a Barrel of Monkeys game with monkeys hanging from a beautiful crepe myrtle put a smile on every visitor’s face. The space was accented with Big Duck Gold marigolds and Orange Flamma celosia. The Putt-Putt game contained ramps and putting greens surrounded with Queeny Lime Orange zinnias and Purple Asian Garden celosia. The Battleship landscape utilized the favored Queeny Lime Orange zinnias around the “battleships” created from reclaimed gas cylinders and sheet metal.

In the Contemporary group, the fun and popular Corn-Hole landscape has the playing boards bordered by South Pacific Orange cannas along with more Queeny Lime Orange zinnias and Onyx Red ornamental peppers. The interactive Jenga set was over 5 foot tall and was a big hit with all visitors.

Second Place Winner: Weston Garden Center, Weston, Missouri.

Weston Garden Center’s approach to the challenge was to create 7 different stations, each with a different Game theme and applicable AAS Winners. They encouraged visitors to read the plant tags then, using the clues given, asked them to guess the game. This helped teach visitors about the plants and their English and Latin names in a fun way. Although someone called it a collection of bad “Dad jokes” it successfully met the mission.
Station 1 – “Dungeons and Dragons” used Dragonfly and Red Ember peppers around a castle wall with Galahad Tomato growing out from the castle.
Station 2 – “The Count Counts” (Sesame Street) had a Dracula Celosia in the shade of a Midnight Snack tomato known for its black and blood red fruits.
Station 3 – “Bullfighting” used Escamillo Pepper and other props to give the feel of an arena.
Station 4 – “Roulette” featured peppers of various heat levels including Roulette. Without knowing the proper names of the peppers, eating any of them became a game of chance.
Station 5 – “Pickle Ball” used three varieties of AAS winning cucumbers (Green Light, Parisian and Diva) up the side of a Gazebo with some Pickle Balls hanging among the fruits.
Station 6 – “Duck, Duck, Goose” used the Big Duck collection of Marigolds (Gold, Yellow, and Orange) and paired them with Gooseneck Loosestrife plants.
Station 7 – “The Hunger Games” featured the plants Katniss, Rue and Primrose (names of some of the movie and novel characters) and Sparky Tomato to represent this game.

Third Place Winner (tie): Mississippi State Univ-South Mississippi Branch Experiment Station, Poplarville, Mississippi.

Participation in the AAS Display Garden Challenge is a highlight of the year for the dedicated volunteers at this garden. In planning, they decided to include a diverse mix of games as well as both old and new AAS Winners planted in a myriad of ways. Since June is the peak for both color and performance in South Mississippi, they planned June as the month to feature all the Games in the Garden. The games were positioned to bring visitors to the main display garden to see the AAS trials. From there, visitors saw the first game (Ring Toss) that played homage to AAS winning vegetables. Nearby, American Dream corn made the perfect ‘corny’ backdrop for their Corn Hole game. Next to that was a tic-tac-toe game using pool noodles for the game matrix and labeled frisbees: a Master Gardener logo (for the X’s) and an AAS Winner logo (for the O’s).

An AAS trivia game was extremely popular with all visitors who were given a card with questions related to the AAS Display Garden. For example, “Which AAS rudbeckia was a 1961 winner?” (Answer: Gloriosa Double Daisy) In order to determine the answer, visitors would have to find these plants in the garden and scan the QR code found on each label. Each QR Code goes to that AAS Winner’s webpage. As an added bonus, visitors who turned in a completed trivia card were presented with an AAS plant to take home. These free plants included Mega Bloom Pink Halo and Mega Bloom Polka Dot, among others. All in, they incorporated 26 ornamental and 18 vegetable varieties as part of the challenge.

Third Place Winner (tie): Master Gardener Association of Tippecanoe County Display Garden, Lafayette, Indiana

When the AAS landscape design challenge theme was announced, the MGA of Tippecanoe began designing their games. At the garden entrance, star-shaped beds took on the life of a Chinese Checkers game. The raised six-pointed beds had each point of the star planted with an AAS Winner representing one color of the Chinese checker marbles: Viking XL Red on Chocolate begonia for red; Evening Sensation petunia for the blue; Sweet Daisy Birdy leucanthemum for the white; Delizz strawberry for the green; Chef Choice Black tomato for the black and Big Duck marigolds and Chef Choice Yellow tomato for the yellow.

Another area hosted the AAS Tomato Scavenger Hunt. Thirteen tomato varieties were used. A mailbox housed clipboards with a list of questions. Hunters used the AAS variety signs to identify the varieties. A sample question: “Which AAS tomato variety would you give to your sweetheart?” (Valentine) This really made garden visitors focus on the signs plus, hunters  sampled the varieties as they searched.

There was also a cornhole match located near the American Dream corn patch and a tongue twister competition with the recitation of “Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers” located in the AAS pepper patch. In all, 67 varieties were planted, and hundreds of visitors were educated about AAS varieties. Surplus vegetables were donated to local food pantries and a homeless shelter.

Honorable Mention Winners in each category can be found on the AAS website.

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Twagira’s Newest Finalist for African Studies Association 2022 Best Book Prize

Associate Professor of Record Laura Ann Twagira’s the latest reserve commences with a song – women from Mali are singing and bragging about the excellent of their cooking. From this domestic second, Twagira found the keys to a technological revolution.

“Women are bragging and praising just one a different. They are producing foods that everyone’s likely to enjoy and that will enliven existence. In buy to do that, they have to have a vital established of technological abilities,” she mentioned.

Twagira’s e-book Embodied Engineering: Gendered Labor, Food Protection and Style in Twentieth-Century Mali was named a finalist for the 2022 Most effective E book prize from the African Scientific tests Association (ASA). The winner of the award will be introduced in November.

The ASA offers the prize yearly, recognizing the most significant scholarly operate in African scientific studies posted in English and dispersed in the United States throughout the preceding year. The textbooks represented appear from many disciplines, like sociology, literature, political science, and history.

“Her exploration demonstrates the huge agency and significance of Malian women of all ages in their capability to cultivate embodied relationships with the natural entire world as a result of the cultivation, selection, and cooking of foodstuff,” wrote Inigo Acosta in his assessment for H-Sci-Med-Tech / H-Web Assessments.

Employing a blend of folktales, archival exploration, and oral interviews, Twagira explores how women in rural Mali have utilised engineering to be certain meals stability by way of the colonial interval, several environmental crises, and postcolonial rule. In carrying out this exploration she also noticed Malian women cooking for their communities and learned by their side, a not so quick task.

“The book is about gals as technological brokers. In substantially progress literature, African girls are represented as remaining in need to have of technological guidance. Effectively, (in Mali) women were by now savvy technological agents in advance of any colonial or post-colonial enhancement initiative,” Twagira mentioned.

She concentrated her analysis on the Office du Niger, an irrigated agricultural challenge crafted by the French in the 1930s. The undertaking radically changed the landscape around the Niger River, such as the bulldozering of trees required for the women’s foods creation. In several approaches, the plan transformed how ladies approached their do the job. “For case in point, in adopting metallic cooking pots, they found a technological resolution to what was seriously a deforestation crisis for the reason that the new pots did not require as much wood to gasoline the hearth,” Twagira stated.

In 1968 — not prolonged right after independence from the French — Mali’s armed forces took about the country and another ecological and food crisis emerged. To aid regular men and women have plenty of to eat, ladies smuggled foodstuff from the fields in headscarves or tied it all over their stomachs to make them search expecting. “This exercise is a really very good instance of embodied engineering. It is not just about labor, it’s about ladies transforming their bodies to guarantee the foodstuff stability and survival of people in the area,” she said.

Uncomplicated but impactful technological improvements – cooking pots, the mortar and pestle, and a lot more – turned enshrined in Malian folklore. For illustration, even though doing exploration at the Schomburg Centre for Study in Black Society, she observed a group of folktales penned in the Bambara language describing gals who cooked speedily as possessing magical or superhero like attributes. “It drop light-weight for me on the way women’s benefit in generating food was this kind of that it could typically feel fantastical to folks who lived by intervals of drought and food items lack,” she mentioned.

Twagira’s initially introduction to West Africa was by her Francophone Literature Scientific tests at Wellesley Faculty, and she was psyched to draw on regional folklore for the guide. Soon after graduation she joined the Peace Corps and invested a yr performing in a modest Malian overall health heart. “It was a transformational encounter for me, mastering about a new tradition and my initially-time observing women’s collective get the job done procedures.” she claimed.

The midwife Fatoumata Djénépo with whom Twagira worked was deeply concerned with nutrition issues. “All of the solutions had been rooted in women’s awareness about food manufacturing and bettering on what they now knew,” Twagira claimed.

From there a route toward turning out to be a historian was founded, joining Wesleyan in 2013.

Doing the job with students on their theses and engaging in the wealthy mental life of the College has only served her long system of delving into Mali’s society. When a fellow with the Wesleyan Centre for Humanities, she shared parts of the reserve manuscript with students and innovated a key supply workshop with elements from her new undertaking on the technobody politics of colonial rule and demography.