Green America Awards Honor Community Gardening Projects
Three community gardening projects from across the United States have been honored with Nature Hills Nursery Green America Awards, which were created to give national recognition and $5,000 in plants to community organizations and groups who are making “hands-on” improvements to their local environments.
Winners of the 2009 awards were chosen from more than 200 applications submitted by community groups, nonprofit organizations and gardening programs nationwide.
Bridging the Gap, a nonprofit environmental organization that is beautifying a vacant lot in Kansas City, Mo.’s Ivanhoe neighborhood, won the first-place award of $2,500 in plants. The lot has already been cleared of litter and debris, and volunteers are ready to begin creating a green space for the neighborhood, complete with play areas for children and rest areas for adults.
The second-place winner of $1,500 in plants was Two Coves Community Garden in Astoria, N.Y., a newly established oasis in western Queens that provides fresh produce to residents of a neighborhood that has been described as “a food desert.”
Honored with the third-place award of $1,000 in plants was Homewood Heights Community Garden in Austin, Texas. Homewood Heights is a 1-year-old community garden that sprouted from a reclaimed urban lot that was used for many years as a dump for construction debris. Many of the plants received from the Nature Hills Nursery Green America Award will be used to beautify the community space in front of the garden.
Nature Hills Nursery, an Omaha, Neb.based website-only retailer that sells trees, shrubs, perennials and other plants, created the Nature Hills Nursery Green America Awards as a way to give back to the communities and people who have contributed to the success of the company.
“The winners are truly making a difference in their respective communities,” said Jeffrey Dinslage, president of Nature Hills Nursery, which sponsors the national awards. “This year’s crop of winners is living proof that gardening makes the world a better place, one garden at a time.”
For more information about the awards, visit www.naturehills.com.
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