Arboretum at Penn State wins award for pollinator and bird garden

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. (WTAJ) — The Arboretum at Penn State has won an international award for its sustainable landscape architecture for its Pollinator and Bird Garden.

The A+ International Jury Award for Sustainability for Landscapes by Archizter was awarded to the garden, the university announced on Wednesday. Archizter is an online platform for architects and designers.

“This is well-deserved recognition,” Harland Patch, director of pollinator programming at the Arboretum, said. “The garden is unique in that it puts together habitat design and design that is accessible and beautiful to humans with a very diverse mix of plants, many of which you will not see in any other garden.”

Patch, who was also part of the team that created the garden, is an assistant research professor for the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences.

Casey Sclar, the H.O. Smith Endowed Arboretum Director, said pollinators are important to Pennsylvania agriculture, which is the state’s biggest industry. Each year, pollinators support 593,000 jobs and contribute $132.5 billion to the state’s economy.

“This garden is a living laboratory dedicated to Penn State’s 21st-century land-grant mission,” Sclar said.

The pollinator garden spreads over more than four acres. It was designed to attract both residents and migratory birds and insect pollinator species as well as to serve as a site for scholarly research and educational activities. It contains extensive beds of pollinator and bird-friendly plants, water features, beehives, agriculture beds and an orchard.

Emmanuel Didier, creative director of Didier Design Studio and lead designer of the project, said it was rewarding to be recognized for the project that has provided a “sense of solution” to some of the ecological threats causing pollinator decline and insect apocalypse.

“That sense of hope with it is just beautiful,” Didier said.

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Architizer said its sustainability awards were created “to amplify the ideas of architects whose projects act as positive precedent for green building practices.”

To learn more about the Arboretum at Penn State, visit their website .

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