BYU hosts and wins National Collegiate Landscape Competition

BYU triumphed in this year’s National Collegiate Landscape Competition, winning overall against 50 other universities from across the nation.

The competition draws roughly 600 landscape and horticulture students together for the chance to win awards, scholarships and make important connections that will help them in their future careers. 

This year, the participating schools gathered on this side of the Rocky Mountains for the competition, with BYU as its host. 

In an event called “Irrigation Assembly,” teams of two have less than two hours to assemble a functioning irrigation system. After the allotted time, water turns on and students step back while their work is assessed. 

Adam Frost, a Mississippi State sophomore, won first place in last year’s Irrigation Assembly competition. 

“We were not prepared for drip irrigation … We spent way too much time doing it. We didn’t even get it finished, but I think we still did pretty good compared to a lot of people,” Frost said. 

Other events included skid steer loader operation, tractor loader backhoe operation and turf and weed identification.

“I want to be confident and optimistic, but I’m also really nervous about how I did,” Taylor Carpenter, a junior from North Carolina State competing in Turf and Weed Identification, said. 

“There’s turf, grasses, weeds … There is pests and diseases. And so there’s a selection of 50 different ones … and so we had to write down the scientific and common names of each of them,” Carpenter said. 

After 31 events, the college with the overall highest score was BYU. To learn more about this event, go to their website.