The Connecticut Chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects (CTASLA) announced it has presented its annual Connecticut Olmsted Award to Connecticut Fund for the Environment / Save the Sound.

The award, named after Connecticut native Frederick Law Olmsted, who founded the modern landscape architecture profession in the 19th century, is given annually by CTASLA to an organization or person from Connecticut who has employed the principle of stewardship of the environment as a guiding force in their actions.

 
"Few organizations understand the economic, cultural, and natural benefits of Long Island Sound like the Connecticut Fund for the Environment and Save the Sound," said CTASLA president Oliver Gaffney, a landscape architect with New Haven-based TPA Design Group. "As a non-profit organization, they are committed to restoring and protecting all that impacts the region's environment, including rivers and shorelines, wetlands and forests, the air we all breathe, and the waters of the Sound itself."

From offices in New Haven, Mamaroneck, and on Long Island, Connecticut Fund for the Environment / Save the Sound leads environmental action across the Long Island Sound region in a variety of ways - from legislative advocacy and legal action to environmental monitoring, engineering projects, and training and resources for communities. Together with tens of thousands of dedicated volunteers, activists, and members in Connecticut and New York, the team fights climate change, saves endangered lands, protects the Sound and its rivers, and works with nature to restore ecosystems.

CFE/Save the Sound is a pioneer in urban green infrastructure, installing rain gardens and bioswales that have become a model for Connecticut communities, according to CTASLA. These attractive, customizable, and pollinator-friendly green spaces protect neighborhoods and city streets from flooding, filter pollutants from stormwater runoff, help recharge groundwater, and can even provide habitat and food sources. Along our shoreline and waterways, CFE/Save the Sound's restoration projects have brought riverbanks and coastal marshes back to vibrant life.

The award was presented by CTASLA during a February program at the State Capitol on "Risk and Resiliency: Adapting to Connecticut's Changing Climate," which attracted landscape architects, legislators, planners, environmental activists, and interested citizens. In accepting the award, CFE President Curt Johnson quipped that he and his staff have been able to "stop bad things from happening to good land."

For more than 40 years CFE/Save the Sound has been ensuring that people can enjoy the healthy, clean, and thriving "good land" in Connecticut - which will also benefit generations to come, according to the press release.

Best known for his creation of New York's Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted also designed a handful of prominent Connecticut landscapes, including Bridgeport's Beardsley and Seaside Parks, New Britain's Walnut Hill Park, and the Institute of Living and Pope Park in Hartford. He is buried in Hartford's Old North Cemetery.

Past recipients of the CTASLA Connecticut Olmsted Award have included the Bushnell Park Foundation and Green Valley Institute, U.S. Senators Chris Murphy and Joe Lieberman, State Senators Bill Finch and Andrew Roraback, State Representative Terry Backer, and Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, James Gustave Speth. For a full list of recipients, visit: https://tinyurl.com/yx2pzkry.