GENESEO — Among the many well-landscaped yards in Geneseo are abundant flowers and ornamental plants, offering botanical beauty and horticultural hues to residents and passersby. Even the tidiness of a newly-mowed lawn keeps the village looking neat and orderly, and traditionally signals a kind of respect for the social contract of being a good neighbor.
This year, the Geneseo Garden Club awarded Whitney Carleton and Ben Gajewski with its 20th annual Environmental Improvement Award for doing something entirely different on North Street: creating a yard space that prioritizes pollinators over golf course-style turf, a yard space that highlights the relative ease and value of favoring flowers over grass, and native plant species over popular cultivated varieties.
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