Renowned Horticulturists Receive Awards At All-America Selections’ Summer Summit
October 20, 2015 All-America Selections recently honored two long-time horticulture industry icons at its annual AAS Awards Banquet at the Dallas Arboretum in Dallas, Texas.
AAS Medallion Of Honor
The first award given was the prestigious AAS Medallion of Honor, an award designed to recognize someone with a life-long dedication to advancement in the field of horticulture. This year’s recipient is Dr. Elisabeth Sahin-Georgiadou. As the co-founder and general manager of K. Sahin Zaden with her husband Kees Sahin, Sahin-Georgiadou created a company known around the world for quality products (which she terms “plants with a twist”) and exceptional personnel.
Sahin-Georgiadou began her love of flowers early on when collecting wild flowers while visiting her grandparents in Pophos, Cyprus, and continued that love through her Ph.D at Reading in the UK. Elisabeth and her husband Kees established their breeding company in 1983 to continue to upgrade the garden flowers, and their breeding was instrumental in introducing new genera and further work with established garden favorites, including past AAS winners Sanvitalia ‘Mandarin Orange,’ Achillea ‘Summer Pastel,’ Salvia ‘Lady in Red,’ Verbena ‘Peaches and Crème,’ Geranium ‘Black Velvet Rose F1’ and Agastache ‘Golden Jubilee.’
AAS Breeders Cup
The second award, the AAS Breeders Cup Award, was established in 2004 to recognize a plant breeder who dramatically influenced horticulture by breeding new cultivars that brought significant improvements to those classes. The 2015 Breeder’s Cup Award recipient was Dr. Randy Gardener, a renowned tomato breeder who has spent more than 32 years at the North Carolina State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in Fletcher, N.C.
Dr. Gardner developed the majority of the vine-ripened tomato acreage that is now planted in the Eastern U.S. His accomplishments include 57 tomato releases with 22 finished hybrids and 35 breeding lines, as well as work on disease resistance including early blight, late blight, fusarium wilt race 3 and tomato spotted wilt virus. Many of today’s vine-ripened tomatoes carry the prefix “Mountain” in their names including Mountain Merit (AAS Winner) Mountain Spring, Mountain Fresh and Mountain Pride, all successful Gardner varieties.
For more information on the awards, contact Diane Blazek of All-America Selections and the National Garden Bureau.
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