CINCINNATI — Oberson’s Nursery & Landscape, the Cincinnati-area landscaping firm, has won two Gold awards and one Silver in the National Association of Landscape Professionals’ annual Awards of Excellence, honoring standout commercial landscape projects from across the country.
The awards, announced Wednesday, Oct. 14, by parent company Visterra Landscape Group, recognize three projects that reshaped prominent spaces in Cincinnati: Elm Street Plaza downtown, the University of Cincinnati’s Bearcat monument, and the university’s historic Old Chemistry Building.
The first Gold went to the transformation of Elm Street Plaza, the first completed project in an $828 million investment to revitalize Cincinnati’s Convention District. Oberson’s finished the landscape portion of the job in just five months across an entire city block without closing streets, installing 3,600 cubic feet of high-grade engineered soil produced at the company’s branch in Ross, Ohio.
The second Gold honored the relocation of the University of Cincinnati’s Bearcat monument, which Oberson’s crews placed at the heart of the UC campus. The work, led on site by project superintendent Angel Velasco and his team, moved the iconic statue into a central position where students and visitors pass it daily.
The Silver award recognized the Old Chemistry Building rehabilitation, also at UC. That project combined hardscape and softscape improvements around one of the university’s most historic buildings, including a specialized rooftop garden that had to be carefully calibrated and installed above a building that remained occupied during the work.
Visterra president and CEO Alan T. Handley credited the Oberson’s team, led by project manager Michael Bodner, with delivering the three complex projects safely, on time and on budget. The National Association of Landscape Professionals is the national trade association for the landscape industry, which employs more than one million professionals nationwide.
Oberson’s and the other winning firms will be formally recognized on Monday, Nov. 9, at the association’s ELEVATE National Conference and Expo at the Tampa Convention Center in Florida. For Cincinnati, the honors put a local firm’s fingerprints on two of the city’s most visible recent projects: a convention district plaza meant to welcome visitors downtown, and the campus of its largest university.