Jun 9, 2014 3 min read

GREENSBORO – The Greensboro Elm Street Project has won a statewide Townie Award for its Adopt a Garden program.

The Adopt a Garden program, developed by Olivia and Sam Burich, won statewide accolades.

This creative program developed by the Clean Safe and Green Team that Olivia Burich leads, puts all of the green space in Greensboro up for adoption every year.

The borough has 17 gardens in town to maintain and each one is adopted by a neighborhood resident or family.

The Nathanael Greene Community Development Corp. then purchases barn wood signs that depict the name of the family or resident who maintains the garden through the season.

This is a cost savings for the borough and has impacted the overall beauty of each of these spaces, or “pocket gardens.”

The award was presented to the Burichs on June 3 at the annual Townie Award ceremony hosted by the Pennsylvania Downtown Center during its annual conference. This year, the conference was held in Altoona.

Greensboro’s Adopt a Garden program was one of 12 awards presented by the Pennsylvania Downtown Center during the annual gala.

The Townie Awards are a festive and venerable tradition designed to recognize the commonwealth’s core communities and individuals for creation and implementation of projects, programs and events that exemplify the goals of PDC’s community revitalization mission.

Eligible communities consist of Pennsylvania Downtown Center’s nearly 200 member organizations, which include about 70 Main Street and 30 Elm Street programs, making the Townies a competitive award process each year.

“Each year, we look forward to the Townie Awards presentation for its ability to excite and inspire our members to continue their community revitalization efforts,” center’s executive director Bill Fontana said.

“Our member communities work tirelessly to improve their cities and towns, and we love having the opportunity to applaud them for their efforts,” he said.

The Townie Awards are a part of PDC’s annual statewide conference, which is held in a different community each year in order to highlight the respective city or town’s accomplishments in community and neighborhood revitalization.

This year’s conference was attended by more than 125 borough and municipal officials, experts in community planning and landscape architecture, and dozens of Main Street and Elm Street managers.

Highlights of the conference included nationally recognized speakers, more than two dozen educational sessions, mobile workshops highlighting the region’s natural waterways and hiking trails and a visit to downtown Hollidaysburg.

Founded in 1987, the mission of Pennsylvania Downtown Center is to advance the sense of place, quality of life and economic vitality of Pennsylvania’s downtowns, traditional neighborhood business districts and nearby residential areas.

For information about the Townie Awards and this year’s recipients, call Julie Fitzpatrick or Bill Fontana at 717-233-4675.