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Dispatch Backyard Garden Awards: Best-of-show winner ready to go big

Jim Weiker
The Columbus Dispatch
Winner: Kristy Gallo, Gahanna Gardener's comments: "Transforming this original asphalt basketball pad into a thriving native Ohio ecosystem and certified wildlife habitat has brought me incredible joy and peace. There are approximately 25 different species of native prairie grasses, flowers and sedge." Judges' remarks: "What a native garden should look like with different textures and variety, great use of space, nice water feature, setting is beautiful, especially for a three-year-old garden, nice symmetry. ... majority of judges selected this garden as Best of Show."

Kristy Gallo's "prairie paradise" garden was beautiful enough to win Best-of-Show in this year's Dispatch Backyard Garden Awards.

But the Gahanna woman has no plans to repeat. 

Creating the garden last year helped inspire Gallo to take her love of nature to a bigger stage. She and her wife, Ali Gallo, are moving to Pennsylvania to pursue gardening on at least 10 acres.

"Like a lot of people in the past year or so, what's really come center stage is what's important," Gallo said. "For us, that's connecting with nature, and giving back to it. ... Being in the midst of creating this garden in the long run really did cement that priority, and an awareness of how much joy this brings me." 

People's Choice Winner: Melanie McClure, South Side Gardener's comment: "Front and center are our containers filled with favorites, and experiments, new plants, and new ways of planting old favorites. We have learned to repurpose any number of materials to provide the garden a unique texture and have built many of the components in place. Our little Narnia is home to 30+ varieties of succulents, flowers, edibles, and medicinal herbs."

Other entries in the fourth annual Dispatch garden contest may not have been as life-changing, but all demonstrated a deep love and commitment to the outdoors.  

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"It's obvious how much the garden means to them. Whether it's in a container or a vegetable garden, or a natural landscape, the gardeners really have their heart and soul in it," said Carol McGlone, a Franklin County master gardener who oversaw the judging of the show with fellow master gardeners Susan Benedetti and Rita Brown.

This year's contest drew 252 entries in six categories: community, container, landscape, natives, perennials and vegetable. Winners were announced in all categories, along with Best-of-Show and People's Choice, on Sept. 11 at the Fall Dispatch Home & Garden Show at the Ohio Expo Center.

Vegetable Garden
Winner: Janice Tugaoen, Westerville  
Gardener's comments: "These beds provide us with a continuous harvest all season through succession planting of transplants grown from seeds. ... This garden nourishes our family in many different ways and harvest days are when the garden loves us right back."
Judges' remarks: "Lots of variety, use of beautiful space, vertical and in-ground gardens, liked the bench for enjoying the garden. Lots of definition in their gardening techniques such as hoops, trellis low tunnel, good use of wood chips on the pathways."

Oakland Nurseries sponsors the contest with the help of AgPro and master gardener volunteers.

"All the gardens were very beautiful, very detailed," said Arica Leonard, event operations manager for the Columbus Dispatch/USA Today Network Ventures. "You could tell people put so much time and effort into them."

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As a biology major in college, Gallo has long had an interest in nature. But she didn't start her award-winning garden until after she moved into her Gahanna home in 2015. Starting with an organic garden in in 2016, Gallo added a 40-by-10-foot prairie garden the following year.

Perennial Garden
Winner: Margaret Swisher, Columbus 
Gardener's comments: "The beauty of my front yard garden is enjoyed by the neighbors who often comment on the joy it gives them. Gardening has kept me healthy and vital as I move into my 88th year."
Judges' remarks: "Lots of color, artistically done, quite a variety of perennial plants, spectacular display of perennial plants especial for a front yard, layout of plants is eye appealing."

Then she started planning big. In late 2019, she mapped out what she calls her "prairie paradise" on a roughly 50-by-75-foot old asphalt basketball court.

In March 2020, she removed the court, added a pond and got to work creating a native Ohio ecosystem, with about 25 species of native prairie grasses, flowers and sedge, along with native elderberry, silky dogwood, spice bush, red osier dogwood and downy serviceberry. 

Tucked into the flora are habitats for bees, butterflies, frogs, birds and bats. 

Community Garden Winner: Jefferson Street Oasis Community Garden, Springfield Gardeners' comments: "A community garden on almost five acres in the middle of a 'food desert' on the southwest side of Springfield. The garden consists of 80 plots for the community to grow healthy food, areas for chickens of various breeds that provide eggs for the community, a pollinator garden, an herb garden, and a children's garden with an education building." Judges' comments: "Healthy, lush gardens represent a way for people to develop an area that sits within a food desert, growing and distributing fresh vegetables to the community that is brought together for a common purpose. ..."

"I'm not really a good friend to monoculture — green-turf plants that strip away things from the environment," she said. "I wanted something that adds natural shelter and food sources back into the environment, to restore natural areas."

Gallo jokes that some of her love of native plants and landscapes stems from their low maintenance.

"I’m lazy and they don’t require care," she said. "I don’t want to water, I don’t want to prune, I want plants to do exactly what native plants do."

Container Garden
Winner: Joann Reese, Hilliard 
Gardener's comments: "Just because you're a renter doesn't mean you can't have a beautiful garden! I made sure to move all of my pots and planters (and I have A LOT!) to our new rental home and quickly made great use of them all. Our patio is now just a simple cement slab that we transformed into our own little paradise."
Judges' remarks: "Special to enhance a rental, garden is portable, variety of flowers and pots, has dimension, creative way to mask concrete with pots of colorful flowers with different heights and a water feature."

Melanie McClure knows the feeling.

"I don’t like to mow, I don’t like grass," said the South Side woman who took home two awards this year: second place in the vegetable category and first place in the People's Choice contest.

McClure and her wife, Kristi McClure, built six raised beds for vegetables, along with a greenhouse to start seeds and hold McClure's succulents. 

Landscape Garden Winner: Sondra Gartner, Newark Gardener's comments: "On each side of the path I planted shrubs. Ninebarks are a four-season shrub. They flower nicely in the spring, they have colorful foliage in the summer, they have nice vibrant fall color, and the exfoliating bark is attractive in winter. Spirea is another shrub I planted that is easy to grow and attracts butterflies and other insect pollinators. In the spring there are many varieties of peonies." Judges' remarks: "Beautiful with calming, subtle color, neighbors are lucky, well-maintained, nice variety of plants, pathway draws one to entrance of home — what a wonderful welcome."

The couple also maintain a large in-ground bed that includes corn, sunflowers and one unusual item — luffa plants.

"Most people don't know it comes from an actual vegetable," McClure said. "I don't buy kitchen sponges anymore; we use these." 

For McClure, who also entered last year, the Dispatch contest provides feedback from folks who understand what a successful garden requires.

"It's that recognition and appreciation from other gardeners; it makes a difference," she said.

Native Garden Winner: Brenda Rushin, Grove City Gardener's description: "I have many beautiful native flowers in this section of my garden. There are blazing stars, many different varieties and colors of coneflowers. There are false sunflowers, daisies and hardy hibiscus. There is the beautiful Queen of the Prairie, and a lot of different varieties of milkweed. Then I have spider wort, cup flowers, Joe pye weed and obedient plants." Judges' remarks: "Very clean maintained space, contrast of colors is appealing with the variety of pollinator flowers growing to various heights, provides movement to the garden, birdbath a nice accent."

But, especially during the pandemic, working outdoors has provided something else for gardeners.

"Creating this garden continues to be everything for me, a place of my physical workout, my gym, and one of meditation, my sanctuary and a place to connect with nature and not think of anything else in the world," Gallo said. 

"It's an outlet for my two biggest passions — nature and art," she added. "I’ve found this new coupled relationship, where the soil is my canvas."

jweiker@dispatch.com

@JimWeiker

At a glance

Other Dispatch Backyard Garden Awards winners:

• Community: Steve Thitoff, second; William Dorsey, third 

• Container: Lara Valentine, second; Linda and Jeff Laine, third 

• Landscape: Colleen Yuhn and Patrick Clark, second; Jackie Lundberg, third

• Native: Sally Toth, second; Mark Read, third 

• Perennials: Jill Ladrick, second; Sarah Shuherk, third

• Vegetable: Melanie McClure, second; Ella Carroll, third 

• Best in Show: Kay Hoagland, second  

Top prize in each category is a $250 gift card to Oakland Nurseries; second-place winners earn $100 gift cards; third-place winners receive $50 gift cards; and the best-of-show winner receives a $500 gift card.