PGMS Celebrates 50 Years of Green Star Awards, Announces New Olmsted Property Category
This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the Professional Grounds Management Society’s Green Star Awards, which recognizes excellence in grounds maintenance. In conjunction with this year’s awards celebration, the Society has collaborated with the National Association of Olmsted Parks to create a new awards recognition category, “Olmsted Property.” This awards category is similar in format to the existing Green Star Awards categories but includes special emphasis on preservation, authenticity, and management principles when it comes to the Olmsted designs. Enter right here!
Celebrating their 200th year, the National Association of Olmsted Parks is a non-profit organization comprised of design and preservation professionals, historic property and park managers, scholars, municipal officials, citizen activists, and representatives of numerous Olmsted organizations around the United States. Its concern is the legacy of landscape work left by Frederick Law Olmsted Sr. and the firm continued by his sons. More than 120 organizations nationwide have banded together as “Olmsted 200: Parks for All People” for a year of public programming and events designed to celebrate, strengthen and expand parks, open space and American quality of life.
Olmsted famously worked on: New York’s Central Park and Prospect Park; the U.S. Capitol Grounds; Boston’s Emerald Necklace; Atlanta’s Druid Hills; and numerous parks and landscapes in Chicago, Milwaukee, Buffalo, N.Y., Louisville, Ky., Connecticut, North Carolina, New Jersey, and beyond. He helped design the campuses of Stanford University; University of California, Berkeley; Trinity College; and many other schools and institutions. Olmsted’s work laid the philosophical foundation for the later creation of America’s national and state park systems, and thousands of local parks.
“Frederick Law Olmsted proffered the idea that landscape architecture could create places that bolster the project of American democracy,” said Sara Zewde, founder of Studio Zewde and Assistant Professor of Practice at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. “As we look at American life today, we see great need and opportunity to build on these original aims of landscape architecture. That’s what Olmsted 200 is all about.”
Award entries are accepted through June 15 and more information can be found at https://pgms.org/page/GreenStarAwards.
