Brigham Young University won first overall at the 2022 National Collegiate Landscape Competition, which took place March 16-19.

In the competition, which was held this year at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, students competed in 30 individual competitions including landscape design, irrigation assembly and more.

“I always compare it to a track meet,” said Greg Jolley, faculty adviser and BYU professor of landscape management. “Track is made up of all these individual events and then you add a team score.”

The team from BYU consisted of students either majoring or minoring in plant and landscape systems and beat out nearly 40 other competing universities with a total score of 4,739.68.

According to Jolley, like many other participating schools, BYU’s team was somewhat inexperienced with the landscaping competition since it was postponed in 2020 due to COVID-19 and held virtually in 2021. He stated that it was the team’s partnership with the BYU grounds department that truly helped to prepare them for their victory.

“Students are required to do at least one semester working on BYU grounds and that is the primary way that students get their practical experience working in the field,” Jolley said. “That’s kind of a unique aspect of our program is that we do that, especially compared to other four-year programs, is students are able to do that on-campus in addition to their coursework.”

This isn’t the first win at this competition for BYU. According to Jolley, the university has been competing in the NCLC since 1997 and has taken home eight first-place titles in that time.

“We’ve done very well in it since we started competing in 1997,” Jolley said.

In addition to taking home the gold, BYU students also took home 18 of the 75 scholarships given during the competition, totaling nearly $25,000. Three students won first place in their individual competitions: Brayden Johnson in business management, Abby Kjar in interior landscape design and Jesse Earl in plant problem diagnosis.

The other 12 BYU students who finished in either second place or third place in their individual competitions were:

• Adam Boden, annual and perennial identification (second)
• Ashley Beazer, business management (second); sales presentation (third)
• Johanna Davis/Gavin Heap, employee development (second)
• Noah Stoner, irrigation design (second); irrigation troubleshooting (third)
• Rebekah Hogan, exterior landscape design (third)
• Angelica Franco, flower and foliage identification (third)
• Sam Merrill, irrigation troubleshooting (third)
• Rebecca Decker/Katherine Shipley/Janetta Teichert, landscape plant installation (third)
• Clarissa Peterson, turf and weed identification (third)

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