The British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI) is delighted to announce that two of its Registered members, Linden Landscapes Domestic Gardens Ltd and Andy Sturgeon MBALI have been awarded the coveted International ELCA Trend Award for ‘Building with Green’ at last month’s largest indoor and outdoor European trade fair GaLaBau 2016 in Nuremberg Germany.

The winning scheme was The Box House in Sevenoaks, which won a Principle Award at BALI’s National Landscape Awards ceremony in 2015. The garden was described by judges as “an outstanding home garden project that showed off a multitude of skill including solid architectural landscape design and clever use of planting.”

At the 22nd International Trade Fair for Urban Green and Open Spaces – Design – Construction – Maintenance, “GaLaBau 2016”, ELCA-President Emmanuel Mony presented Mick Callahan, owner of Linden Landscapes Domestic Gardens Ltd and his clients, Keith Roberts and daughter Lucy Roberts, with the coveted ELCA prize.

During the awards speech, ELCA President Emmanuel Mony said: “This garden is an outstanding example of sophisticated landscape design in a home garden. The garden planner and landscape gardeners succeeded in a special way to bring together a number of related historical and modern building elements to a holistic appearance. At the same time, very aesthetically pleasing garden proportions were redefined. From the perspective of the European industry association, this project is a role model. With the award ELCA is simultaneously underlining the importance of private home gardens as a valuable green space and an important location factor for a high quality of life.”

ELCA works biennially in close cooperation with the German Association of Landscape Gardening and Sports Grounds Building e.V. (BGL) to award joint achievements of builders, landscape architects and landscape gardeners in green construction.

Together, the organisations with the presentation of the International Trend Award distinguished “green construction” projects with particular distinctive design qualities and structural, plant and landscape features while at the same time promoting interdisciplinary cooperation.

BALI’s Chief Executive, Wayne Grills said: “Both BALI Members should feel extremely proud of their achievement and this result is a true reflection of the commitment, level of professionalism and expert skills on show from both Mick, his team at Linden Landscapes Domestic Gardens Ltd and Andy, for their design, construction and implementation of such a large-scale private domestic scheme. You have made BALI, and the UK as a whole, incredibly proud and this has certainly raised the bar to new heights for what can ultimately be achieved in the landscaping industry”

The European Landscape Contractors Association (ELCA) takes place every two years and awards landscape contractors and designers from across Europe with a coveted Trend Award. This year, the United Kingdom was chosen as the country in which the schemes would be selected from and as the official member representative for the UK, BALI was asked to put forward domestic schemes for consideration for the Trend Award in 2016.

BALI received nine BALI Registered contractor applications in total, who had all won a prestigious Principal Award from either the 2014 and/or 2015 National Landscape Awards for their domestic projects, and were subsequently put forward to ELCA at the start of 2016 for shortlisting. Judging of the gardens took place over the 6th and 7th July 2016 and the winning contractor and designer were invited out to Germany in September, where they received the award in front of hundreds of European landscape contractors, architects, designers and trade and media representatives at a glittering ceremony.

BALI would like to congratulate both Mick Callahan and Andy Sturgeon for their incredible achievements.

For more information on ELCA, please visit their website https://www.elca.info/en/

For more information on BALI please visit https://www.bali.org.uk/