Leslie Cornell receiving the Green for Life Community award from the Canadian Nursery Landscape Association for the Humboldt Urban Garden Sanctuary (Submitted photo/Leslie Cornell)

By Ben Tompkins

HUGS

Humboldt Urban Garden Sanctuary receives national award

Sep 22, 2022 | 10:40 AM

The Canadian Nursery Landscape Association has awarded the Humboldt Urban Garden Sanctuary (HUGS) with the Green for Life Community award.

Project designer Leslie Cornell received the nationally recognized award of excellence on behalf of HUGS at its 2022 awards ceremony held in Ottawa.

According to Cornell, the decoration came to recognize the hard work that was put into the project and how it brought the community together.

“It was a huge honour to be that person that could bring it all together and that was always my goal from the beginning was to enable this project to come to life,” she said. “The honour came from the project itself, being that it was a healing garden. I was pretty excited, it was pretty special.”

HUGS officially opened back in June and had been multiple years in the making.

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Director of leisure services Michael Ulriksen told northeastNOW he believes this recognition serves as a reminder of the ‘true spirit’ behind the garden.

“Just how much effort and work went into it from those that were most directly involved. It’s phenomenal to see what they were able to accomplish with the resources they had and the timeframe that they were able to accomplish it in. Especially with the fact that this is such a new build and all of the meaning behind the work, it definitely captured the attention of this.”

The garden currently sits at the Humboldt District Hospital Grounds and includes hundreds of trees, shrubs, and perennials, along with a large area of turf.

It is set to provide a healing space for the community, residents of the town, and hospital patients, staff, and guests alike, for years to come.

“Our city has this amazing space that those in the hospital and in the community can just go to and reflect and just enjoy the outdoors and connect with nature and things of that nature,” said Ulriksen. “It’s a huge addition to our community and this award just helps to show the appreciation we have for everyone that was involved in this project and bringing it to fruition.”

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Ben.Tompkins@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter @BenTompkins_8