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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For a back garden that by now follows the principles of Biodiversity in their back garden each individual season, Ashton Backyard just included a further ingredient this 12 months. They highlighted the folks in the group who experienced activities with cultures and plants outdoors of Utah. That ranged from dwelling in other states or international locations to experiences with memorable plants through their lives. By actively marketing and advertising this message to their garden’s website visitors, Ashton Yard arrived out tops in their group!
“Diversity in the backyard is designed attainable by the contributions of scientists, hybridizers and gardeners from all around the entire world.” This assertion by Montreal Botanic Backyard motivated their use of AAS Winners in a design utilizing each coloration in the chromatic circle in a energetic and harmonious undulating dance. While Montreal Botanical Back garden has been impacted by the pandemic which has deprived them of worldwide people, they are embracing their lots of regional people with stunning backyard shows these as the just one found previously mentioned. 
“Diversity in the Garden” for the Point out Botanical Garden of Ga commenced by working with a numerous team of college or university-scholar interns to assist style the 2021 AAS Display Garden. A single scholar specializing in Natural environment + Style and design lead the undertaking and worked with a group of university student interns on a style and design that was approved and applied by the group. Human diversity was the major aim with a purpose of getting website visitors enter the AAS planting bed and check out the crops up-close, and not just check out them from driving a fence. A different sort of diversity made by the group was variety in plant sorts and textures. Non-AAS winners like Muhley grass and sedges were applied to give this sort of texture and create habitat for a numerous variety of animal people. 
Extension Grasp Gardener volunteers worked with the area Purdue University Extension business to plan, plant, maintain and harvest the Purdue Extension Marion County Demonstration Backyard. In preparing the Range in the Yard theme, they centered on employing a assortment of crops and cultivars as very well as making use of a larger blend of shades. To help endorse plant diversity this yr, they also utilised AAS Winners from various of National Backyard garden Bureau’s 2021 “Year Of The” plants in the garden. They also employed AAS cultivars of a few native plant species (Echinacea, Rudbeckia & Gaillardia). The greatest party for the back garden is the Indiana Point out Honest when they experienced practically 12,000 site visitors through the 18-working day celebration. 
Powell Gardens selected to incorporate diversity primarily by the use of many ‘diverse’ gardening procedures that bundled elevated beds, containers and trellises designed of different products. Diversity was also displayed in numerous other ways these kinds of as a assortment of colours, styles, sizes and styles of bouquets, fruits and vegetables that they integrated into the backyard. Just about every AAS Winner was grown in a way ideal fitting that variety’s progress behavior and in a way that confirmed its variety to yard people. 
Le Domaine Joly-De Lotbinière interpreted Range as all the fights humankind have confronted not too long ago these kinds of as Black Life Matter, Indigenous Life Matter, All Lives Matter, and many others. They made use of Ornamental Pepper Onyx Red to produce a mosaiculture of an open black hand to salute all that soreness persons endured. Petunia Scentsation was planted nearby to enclose the display with the colour blue, reminiscent of the AAS logo. Vegetation have been spaced near collectively, not pertaining to heights or widths, just as people in society should be interlaced. The screen was in the Jardins Français, the coronary heart of the yard, allowing for it to be viewed by everybody who came to pay a visit to. In addition, the show was in entrance of the potager, which was built up of AAS veggies and bouquets, to optimize the concept of diversity by means of bouquets and edibles.
The AAS screen backyard is the heart piece of the larger demo and research back garden place at the MSU South MS Department Experiment Station (SMBES) in Poplarville, Mississippi. It is composed of various difficult landscape functions which includes a smaller bridge in excess of a dry creek mattress, a fountain, a gazebo and break up rail fences with arbors. The Master Gardener group from Pearl River County offered virtually all of the assist wanted to approach, plant and care for this garden. The topic of ‘Diversity in the Garden’ was taken to coronary heart on numerous fronts by the designers. Very first, the backyard garden was developed with a various mix of AAS successful ornamentals and edibles. A complete of 17 versions of ornamentals and 16 edibles were included in this year’s garden. On top of that, a varied range of planting approaches were included which incorporated in-ground, regular containers, whiskey half-barrels, rail planters, hanging bag planters and elevated tables. 
The Pima County Grasp Gardeners program answered the phone to produce a back garden reflecting range by picking a 700 square foot elevated backyard garden bed to showcase previous and present AAS Winners. The variety concept had some unplanned benefits. Through setting up, committee users had an open dialog about range, not only in the garden, but also in the local neighborhood and in the greater American culture. By these discussions, the gardeners recognized that numerous varied vegetation can be developed together in Southern Arizona. A sign in the backyard garden distilled their mission: 
Knitting Mill Creek Community Backyard required to plant a display backyard to expose passersby to tried using and real crops that they could plant in their own yards. COVID was even now in complete swing, but they interpreted the topic of ‘Diversity” by planting edibles together with ornamentals and native pollinator plants — a minor some thing for everybody! Their spring educational celebration for the general public highlighted tomatoes — the diverse varieties, developing ailments for accomplishment, etcetera. It also supplied an open place through the pandemic that they could visit and sense risk-free due to the fact it was outdoors and for the reason that they needed masks and social distancing. This back garden turned a secure haven for a vastly assorted group —