Herndon, VA — The Associated Landscape Contractors of America recently presented its prestigious 2002 Exterior Environmental Improvement Judges’ Award to Lambert Landscape Company of Dallas, Texas. The award-winning project involves residential landscape maintenance of an Italian renaissance garden that surrounds a stately home in Dallas. The distinguished judging panel of this year’s exterior awards program selected this project for special recognition because of its unique and superior qualities. ALCA presented the award to Lambert Landscape Company at its Green Industry Conference in Nashville, Tenn.
Maintaining the property, which was originally designed and installed by Lambert Landscape, involves loving care and year-round attention to the finest of details. The garden includes more than 60 containers dedicated to topiaries and annual color, hundreds of clipped espaliered trees and flowering vines, large displays of color, pleached magnolias and allées of crape myrtle and East Palatka hollies.
Lambert’s staff faces many ongoing challenges with the project. Overall, they must maintain the landscape to reflect the grandeur of the residence and to ensure that the horticultural design enhances the Italian architectural style of the home. Limited access to the sunken rear gardens means that all equipment and materials must be delivered by hand. The extensive use of white limestone exacerbates the Dallas area temperature extremes, which can go from more than 100-degree highs in the summer to single-digit lows in the winter.
Success and high-quality work are not new concepts to Lambert Landscape Company. Since 2000, the company has been awarded 11 ALCA Environmental Improvement Grand Awards (including four in the 2002 competition).
Earlier this year, Lambert’s Paul Fields,vice president and director of design, and Dan Morgan, vice president and director of garden services, spoke with ALCA about their efforts to choose high-quality projects for award consideration and about the attention to detail they pay to their award entries. They summed up their philosophy, which continues to be a winning one, as “It’s not the quantity, but the quality, of what we do that matters.