The Landscape Design Council (LDC) of Massachusetts presented three awards at the 2016 Boston Flower & Garden Show recently held at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston. Winners of the awards were the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, the 2016 Newport Flower Show, and Miskovsky Landscaping with David Haskell of Haskell Nursery.

The LDC panel of judges was made up of LDC board members Suzanne Mahler of Hanover, Jana Milbocker of Holliston, and Frances Y J Wheeler of West Boxford. Nancy LaFave of Lakeville supported the panel as clerk.

The LDC’s Emily Seaber Parcher Award is given for excellence in landscape design of a naturalistic garden of less than 1,000 square feet. “Nature’s Classroom,” the winning exhibit by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, featured raised wattle beds of herbs, vegetables, and edible flowers nestled against a woodsy backdrop. Decorative objects of stone and other natural materials graced all areas of the exhibit.

Landscape Design Award I, bestowed by the LDC for excellence in landscape design of a professional garden exhibit, was presented to the exhibit entitled “A Topiary Garden,” offered jointly by Miskovsky Landscaping and David Haskell of Haskell Nursery. The garden combined formal and informal elements, and hardy and non-hardy plants. An enormous granite tabletop, sitting on red oak stumps with additional stumps for seating, was positioned under a stunning redwood arbor. The stone featured throughout the exhibit was collected or quarried in New England.

Landscape Design Award II, given to a Boston Flower & Garden Show exhibitor for the effective use of garden ornaments, water features, specimen trees, or topiary in creating good design, was awarded to “Gilded – Artful Living” by the 2016 Newport Flower Show. True to its name, the exhibit reflected the grand gardens built on Newport’s Bellevue Avenue during the waning days of America’s Gilded Age. The garden room, planted with seasonal bedding plants, was centered on a formal fountain and enclosed by elegant arches and fencing.

Organized in 1963, the Landscape Design Council of Massachusetts operates under the auspices of National Garden Clubs, Inc. and is a special-subjects group of the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts, Inc. The purpose of LDC is to provide ongoing landscape-design education through speakers, workshops, and tours of outstanding public and private areas. The Massachusetts chapter is the largest Council in the US. It provides judges for the Boston Flower & Garden Show and presents three landscape-design awards of its own.

Congratulations and Best Wishes to all!

For more information about LDC, contact chairman Chris Cotter at 508-946-0197 or mg07chris@gmail.com.