TWU Denton and Dallas campuses have been given the Honor Award from the Professional Grounds Management Society as a recognition for their landscaping work this year.
The Professional Grounds Management Society is an organization that is based in the United States that specializes in the landscaping of universities, colleges, cities and parks. The organization provides a space where their members can meet at conferences and talk about maintaining their own landscapes.
“I think it’s very deserving,” TWU landscape manager Roberto Trevino said. “I’m very proud of what the staff does [and] the upkeep of the campus itself. Any student that comes to see the university, that’s one of the first things they’re going to see, and so we want to make a good first impression.”
TWU landscape supervisor Marty Looper started working for the university in 1997 as a groundskeeper. During that time, he mowed the grass and later started maintaining the university’s greenhouse.
“[TWU] started doing more perennial beds and not as many flower beds, which personally I missed, because I liked the difference in color,” Looper said. “I think the standards haven’t changed much [and] I think we hold ourselves to a pretty high standard.”
TWU assistant landscape supervisor Randy Rogers works directly with Trevino and Looper and helps them both maintain the landscape of the campus by using rake manuals to a weed mower.
“My favourite [landscape] is the athletic fields,” Rogers said. “There’s so much to pick from, [and] most people don’t get to see my most favorite one. I get to do more of a native landscape at the Chancellor’s house, so not a lot of people get to see that.”
The Green Star Award means a great deal of importance to everyone on the TWU landscaping services, and everyone on the staff is extremely grateful to receive this award, they said.
“[This award] recognizes the hard work that [we] do throughout the year [and] recognizes the whole university,” Trevino said. “The weather that we have to deal with, the weather conditions, [from] heat to cold, Mother Nature itself, and I’m really proud of what we do here and I love the challenges that we have here.”
Clarise Tujardon can be reached via email at ctujardon@twu.edu.
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