Each year, All-America Selections (AAS) invites public gardens across the country to participate in its annual Landscape Design Challenge—an initiative that encourages creative, educational, and visually compelling displays featuring award-winning AAS varieties. For 2025, the challenge theme was STEAM, prompting participating sites to explore the intersections of Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics through purposeful garden design. Learn more about the design challenge.
This was NCROC's first time entering the challenge with a garden designed by Crystal Sucher, Senior Research Plot Technician at NCROC. For the Bell Museum campers at NCROC, the garden became both classroom and canvas. While planting award-winning AAS varieties, they explored plant biology, applied math skills through spacing and layout exercises, and expressed their creativity through design. A customized curriculum—developed specifically for this project—helped campers connect science with aesthetic decision-making in a tangible, hands-on way. More than 200 youth engaged with the garden over the summer, using it as a living laboratory to make observations and link gardening with fun and learning.
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