Kennedy Heights Landscape Award Winners for 2022
Written and photographed by Michele Dragga
This year’s winners of the Landscape Award Contest were chosen from a field of nineteen nominations. Entries were judged on a scale of 1-10 in the categories of design, maintenance, and color/texture. There were so many beautiful landscapes this year that in addition to the five winners, the judges named five Honorable Mentions. Congratulations to the winners!
Otis Elam, Jr.
This is the second time that Otis has won a landscape award. In the 12 years that he’s lived in his house, he’s developed his garden so that he always has something in bloom throughout the growing season. As perennials fade, he adds annuals for color and tropicals such as elephant ears for bold foliage. He especially likes his lilies that tower over the other plants in midsummer. To take advantage of the sun, Otis tucks in vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, and cabbages in his flower beds, and they look as ornamental as the rest of the plantings. Decorative pots of annuals fill unplanted corners. Otis admits that in the summer he spends most of his time in the garden. In the evenings, he sits on the porch among his houseplants, some that he’s had for over 25 years, enjoying the view of what he has named his Little Ponderosa.
Jess Wieman and Eli Thompson
Five years ago, when Jess and Eli moved to Kennedy Heights, their first landscaping projects were to build a chicken coop and plant a vegetable garden. Since then they have focused on gardening to attract birds, butterflies, and other pollinators. They removed invasive honeysuckle and burning bush shrubs from along their driveway and around the foundation and replaced them with colorful native perennials and native shrubs. Each year, Jess, a Master Gardener, starts annual flowers and vegetable plants under lights in the basement. She plants the annuals among the perennials and along the rustic fence and trellis that they constructed so that the yard is full of color all season. The landscape is a work in progress. The next step is to remove more honeysuckle bushes and replace them with native, edible plants such as pawpaw trees and service berries. Thanks to their thoughtful plantings, Jess and Eli are rewarded with the birds, colorful butterflies, and many other beneficial insects that find their yard a haven.
Ed and Nancy Ciarniello
When the Ciarniellos moved to their house five years ago, they renovated the inside of their home then turned their attention to the landscaping. Their goal was to make the entrance more welcoming by removing winter-creeper vines and junk trees. The entrance to the house now has a wide stone path that borders a bed filled with perennials and flowering shrubs, including the rose that Nancy received as a retirement gift. A shade bed is full of hostas from her daughter’s house (the former home and shade garden of Hal Hess and Christine Schumacher, members of the Landscape Hall of Fame). In another neighborhood connection, Ed saved a large white cedar they removed so that the Ohio Woodworkers Guild, housed in the Lindner Annex, could process the wood for a cedar closet in their new bedroom. In the backyard, Ed and Nancy opened up the view over the valley by removing a dense thicket of honeysuckle. Now they can see as far as downtown, and the backyard has become a favorite place to relax and entertain.
Dave and Reyan Jardine
Dave and Reyan are winning a landscape award for the second time. In the 9 years that they’ve lived in their house, they’ve developed their garden from scratch to include a bed filled with Dave’s favorite hostas, a colorful wildflower garden started from a dollar box of seeds, trailing perennials to complement their retaining wall, and containers filled with bright, eye-catching tender perennials such as mandevilla vines, hibiscus, and dahlias. Reyan loves how pleasing all the color is as you drive up to the house, not only from the plants but from the wildlife such as goldfinches and monarch butterflies that are drawn to the lush flowers. Dave spends a lot of time on the front porch where from the comfort of his chair he enjoys all the color and texture that the garden has to offer.
Tony and Rosa Williams
This is also the second time that Tony and Rosa have won a landscape award. When they moved in 26 years ago, the only plantings were three shrubs. Now the garden is filled with hostas, some that they’ve had for years and have named after their children. The beds are accented with flowering shrubs and many colorful annuals. As Rosa points out, when you turn the corner from Red Bank onto Dunloe you get a beautiful view of the side and front yards with the well-maintained gardens on full display. Tony and Rosa attribute the garden’s success in part to the mulch that they liberally apply each year, sometimes as many as 300 bags. After years of consistent applications, the soil has greatly improved from its original heavy clay. Fall cleanup can be a chore, but they use it as an opportunity to dream of and look forward to what the garden will bring next spring.
Honorable Mention
Rob and Jackie Brumley
Cole Ciambro
Edith Holts and John Chambers
Sam Sence
Sherry and Freddie Stonestreet
For more information on the Landscape Awards, to see past winners, click here.
