Garden contest
In my experience, from the dozens of interviews I’ve done over the years, home/ amateur gardeners tend to be the humblest of people. Sure, they may be proud of having a certain amazing specimen in their garden, of harvesting the earliest tomato, or growing the largest pumpkin, but they’ll tell you it’s their neighbor or a relative who has the “really good garden.” This is all the more reason that I want to encourage you to enter the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s (PHS) annual Gardening and Greening Contest. It’s a chance to have your garden appreciated for what it really is. It may also encourage others to pick up a hoe or a trowel and start planting.
Founded in 1827, PHS had “an early focus on specimen plants and ornamental gardens viewed alone in their majestic beauty.” Over the course of its history, the organization shifted to more of a “holistic understanding of plants as a tool for urban transformation.” Their current mission is to connect “people with horticulture, and together . . . create beautiful, healthy and sustainable communities.” (https://phsonline. org/about/)
The Gardening and Greening Contest is part of the “greening” programs that PHS began in the mid1970s, with the understanding that plants and gardens have a huge, beneficial effect on personal health, the environment, and the economic vitality of Philadelphia and surrounding communities.
The contest is open to backyard and community gardeners in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. Participants can include: home gardeners with inground, combination, container, or specialty gardens; children’s gardens, maintained by school-age children under the supervision of an adult; community gardeners with vegetable and flower gardens, garden blocks, public-space plant- ings and parks; and businesses that have beautified their properties.
Here are the entry categories:
• Vegetable Garden: Any size garden with mostly vegetables, cared for by an individual, or a community vegetable garden cared for by three or more people.
• Flower Garden: Any size garden containing mostly flowers and/or trees and shrubs. This includes community flower gardens cared for by three or more people.
• Container Garden: A garden where most plants are grown in containers, pots, or window boxes.
• Combination Garden: Any size garden with both vegetables and flowers where both have significant impact.
• Specialty Garden: A flower garden including pollinator gardens, native gardens, rain gardens, or other gardens highlighting specific plants.
• Children’s Garden: A home garden, a plot within a community garden, or a garden on school grounds that is maintained primarily by school-age children, usually under adult supervision.
• Garden Block: A commercial or residential block with container plantings, hanging baskets, and/or inground plantings.
• Public Space (Plantings or Parks): Gardens located in public spaces such as parks, libraries, churches, hospital grounds, train stations, traffic islands, businesses, memorial gardens, etc.
• Urban Farm: An entrepreneurial garden that grows and sells fruit, vegetables, and flowers and donates a percentage of the produce to a food cupboard.
While the contest is open throughout the three states, most of the entries come from our tri-state area, including my friends Don and Barb Knabb, who were among the winners last year and the year before, for their amazing vegetable garden at their home in West Chester, Pa.
Gardeners whose projects are chosen for recognition will be invited to an awards reception, where photos of the winning gardens will be showcased. In addition, all contestants can enroll in PHS gardening programs and workshops at reduced costs. So, if you enter, you stand to gain a bit of fame (if not fortune), and also have easier access to programs to help you learn how to make your garden even better.