ValleyCrest Wins 14 Awards

Roger Zino, (in center), President of Calabasas, Calif.-based ValleyCrest Landscape Maintenance accepts 2009 Judges Award for Glenridge on Palmer Ranch project as part of 40th Annual PLANET Awards. Flanking Mr. Zino are David Snodgrass, PLANET President-Elect (on left) and Bill Hildebolt, PLANET President (on right).
Photo courtesy of Philippe Nobile

ValleyCrest Landscape Companies was honored with 14 PLANET Awards at the 40th annual Green Industry Conference awards presentation and reception in Louisville, Ky. ValleyCrest received a prestigious Judges Award as well as 13 Environmental Improvement Awards from the Professional Landcare Network. An additional award was bestowed on Burton S. Sperber, ValleyCrest Founder, Chairman and Co-CEO, who received Lawn & Landscape Magazine’s 2009 Leadership Award.

The 2009 PLANET Environmental Improvement awards were distributed among three ValleyCrest divisions including nine for ValleyCrest Landscape Maintenance, three for ValleyCrest Landscape Development and one for ValleyCrest Residential’s Estate Gardens. ValleyCrest Landscape Maintenance won a special PLANET Judges Award, which recognizes the best landscape in the country, and two PLANET Decade Awards, given to properties that won Grand Awards 10 years earlier, maintain continuous service and currently are examples of landscape excellence.

The Judges Award was presented to Glenridge on Palmer Ranch, an innovative 90-acre retirement community in Sarasota, Fla. One Decade Award was for Cisco Systems’ 68-acre office campus in San Jose, Calif. and another was for the City of Hope’s Duarte medical campus near Los Angeles. Other highlights for ValleyCrest Landscape Maintenance included PLANET Grand Awards in the commercial landscape management category for Glenridge on Palmer Ranch and Gaylord Palms, a 63-acre resort and convention center located near the Walt Disney World Resort in Central Florida.

“It is very gratifying to be recognized by landscape industry veterans at PLANET for doing great work,” said Roger Zino, president of ValleyCrest Landscape Maintenance, who attended the ceremony to accept the awards. ”Further, the combination of winning two of the three Decade awards presented, and the selection of Glenridge as the top landscape in the country, was a very special moment and one that I will never forget. While it was a bit overwhelming to receive so many awards, it was a great testament to our people’s passion for using their horticultural skills to provide great landscapes for our customers consistently over time”

Two ValleyCrest Landscape Development projects earned PLANET Grand Awards in 2009. Caruso Affiliated’s The Americana at Brand, a vibrant and popular 16-acre mixed-use retail development in Glendale, Calif., won in the commercial landscape contracting category and Naval Air Station Pensacola, a key training base for Navy and Marine aviators, won in the ecological restoration category for a remarkable design-build project involving a 17-acre preservation and restoration program completed for the Department of the Navy. 

“The quality of ValleyCrest Landscape Development’s work continues to be recognized by peers as outstanding and considered among the very best installation projects completed in 2008,” said Tom Donnelly, president of ValleyCrest Landscape Development. “PLANET awards speak volumes about ValleyCrest’s ability to create, design or build landscaped environments that exceed customer expectations while meeting market challenges.”