On Feb. 23, the University of Connecticut’s Horticulture Club won multiple awards for their garden display at the Connecticut Flower and Garden Show. They won five awards : “Excellence in Design,” “Best Educational,” “Best Use of Unusual Plant Material,” “Best Use of Texture” and “Best Use of Garden Structures.”
The CT Flower and Garden Show is an annual event hosted in the CT Convention Center in Hartford, where exhibitors put together a garden display to show off their organization. The majority of these exhibitors are for-profit organizations, including landscaping companies and greenhouses. The UConn Horticulture Club was one of the few non-profit organizations and the only college group to create a display for the event. Throughout the event, different panels of judges look at all the displays and give out their respective awards at the end of the event. The prestigious “Excellence in Design” award, handed out by Federated Garden Clubs of CT, Inc., and The Landscape Design Council, is only given to two displays, one of which went to the Horticulture Club.
The other four awards that the club won were given directly from the CT Flower and Garden Show. These awards are each in a different category, which are decided on by a different panel of judges. “Best Use of Texture” is a design award, “Best Use of Unusual Plant Material” is a horticultural award, “Best Use of Garden Structures” is an implementation award and “Best Educational” is an originality award.
Considerable work went into making sure that their display was as good as it possibly could be. The president of the Horticulture Club is senior Will Carter, a sustainable plant and soil systems and digital media and design double major at UConn. He created a rough design of what they’d be creating at the garden show. The club had a 600-square-foot plot, doubling the size of their display last year, and were tasked with procuring the materials and plants that they would use to fill that space. Unlike many other organizations present, the club doesn’t have its own greenhouse space to grow the plants for themselves, so they relied on businesses from across the state to donate plants for their display. In an emailed response, Carter and two other club officers, Vice President Sofia Karalekas and Secretary Olivia Delello, talked about the process of acquiring these donations.
“We are incredibly lucky to have had these kind nursery owners respond to our requests for plant donations in large numbers. Due to their combined contributions, we had over two hundred gorgeous, healthy plants to fill our garden this year!” Delello said.
The club started building their display on Feb. 18, meaning they only had four days to finish their plot before the garden show. Volunteers signed up for shifts each day to get the display done. This was difficult for the club, since many of the volunteers were students at UConn’s Storrs campus, which meant they had to commute to Hartford to volunteer. There were other challenges while developing the plot, including when a mulch loader broke, preventing any mulch being delivered that day, but the volunteers were able to persevere in order to have their display ready for the opening.
“Winning these awards has been a source of encouragement for us and will ensure we continue the tradition of participating in this show, despite the effort required to pull it off. These awards also help us get the word out about our club and act as a source of publicity for us, making the show a great way for us to connect with others,” Carter said.
The UConn Horticulture Club holds meetings at 7 p.m. every Wednesday that are open to all UConn students. The club has many activities, including holding multiple plant sales throughout the year, community engagement activities, and field trips, ranging from small weekend trips to local nurseries to traveling to other countries to learn about the local botany. For more information about the club, check out the club’s Instagram page at @uconnhortclub, or email them at uconnhortclub@gmail.com.