City's 2014 Green Thumb Awards announced

The city of Edwardsville Beautification and Tree Commission has announced the 2014 Green Thumb Award recipients.

Each year residents of Edwardsville who keep the city beautiful with their landscaping and gardening efforts are recognized by the Edwardsville Beautification and Tree Commission.

The Green Thumb Committee members include: Wilma Jene Bond, Mike Reinhardt, photographer Samantha Sponeman and chair Zyann Kinney, who visit nominated gardens and select the most outstanding properties to be honored with the Green Thumb Award. Each recipient receives a letter of congratulations and a certificate from Mayor Hal Patton, and a Green Thumb sign posted on their property for one month. This year the Green Thumb Committee selected 12 properties to receive the award: seven residential, two business/commercial, two neighborhoods and one civic property.

Residential award recipients include Christina Kaman and Stan Zubal, Benna and Gary Denue, Pat Rzewnicki, Will and Liz Krause, Leslie Wagner, Mary and Steve Shaffer, and Laura and Scott Reed. The business Green Thumb award recipients are Cleveland-Heath Restaurant and Eclipse Car Wash. The two neighborhood recipients include Ebbets Field Subdivision entrance and Trinity Square Apartments. The civic category recipient is Ninian Edwards Plaza Park.

Residential Category

Christina Kaman and Stan Zubal, 148 Barnett Dr.

Christina Kaman and Stan Zubal have spent the last nine years turning what may have been a troubling landscape grade into a uniquely flattering feature of the property. Tackling the potential erosion problem resulted in wrapping their home in beautiful plantings that provide interest and color for all seasons. Being a third generation mason, Stan built hardscape retaining walls, a stone and a brick patio, terraced flowerbeds, and decks overlooking Dunlap Lake. Beginning with a perennial slope in the backyard and then spreading to the other planting beds, Christina intentionally used native plants such as coneflowers, black-eyed Susan, day lilies, lambs ear, coreopsis, Bishops weed, red hot poker plant, Solomon Seal, hydrangea, peonies, coral bells, lily-of-the-valley, elephant ears, cannas, Japanese iris, hibiscus, hosta, ferns, grasses, and more to achieve a cottage garden feel. As a result of the natural landscape plantings, there are regular sightings of birds, squirrels, chipmunks, geese, ducks and a fox family on the grounds.

Benna and Gary Denue, 215 Commercial St.

Being good stewards of their recently designated Edwardsville Historic Landmark home, Benna and Gary Denue have preserved the botanical past as well as carefully maintaining the 1923 Georgian Revival style home of the late Dr. and Mrs. Eugene Wahl.

The homeowners have relocated some of the original plants, expanded planting beds, redesigned the front landscape, built an arbor and picket fencing, added a grape arbor, and created sweeping (his and her) flowerbeds that divide the backyard into outdoor rooms. Rosa Paul Scarlet dating back to 1946, hydrangea, garden phlox, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Miss Becky daisies, sweet pea, brunnera, and American Holly trees are just some of the original vintage plantings that are located in immaculately maintained beds. Benna (a master gardener), likes to recycle and repurpose items and reports, . . . things have memories that is what it is all about. . .; thus a Siberian Iris from a trip to New York, a hollyhock from visiting her son in Durango, Colo., a blue gingham draped old fashioned kitchen table, baskets filled with annuals, and gifted garden dcor items are artfully placed throughout the landscape. The total effect of the vast array of perfectly placed plants, from the million bells calibrachoa spilling out of window boxes on the front porch, to the forsythia hedge that defines the end of the property, is that of comfortable elegance.

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City's 2014 Green Thumb Awards announced