Farragut Outdoor Classroom Nominated for Orchid Award

Keep Knoxville Beautiful has announced nominations for this year’s Orchid Awards, and McGill Associates was pleased to learn the Town of Farragut received a nomination for its Outdoor Classroom. The event will be held Tuesday, March 1, at The Standard in Knoxville.

McGill Associates previously worked with the Town of Farragut to design the outdoor classroom on a 1.4-acre tract on Campbell Station Road in order to emphasize water quality and public education with regard to sustainability, while also incorporating community-based participation. The classroom contains rain gardens, bio-retention areas, adaptive landscaping, rainwater harvesting, and many other sustainable practices that engage the public and help foster community-based service learning projects. The firm provided surveying, landscape architecture, and civil engineering services to develop the project from concept through construction. The project included the use of various types of pervious surfaces for the multi-use trails, internal pathways, and parking areas.

Orchid Awards recognize the area’s most beautiful properties. The non-profit Keep Knoxville Beautiful, which promotes litter eradication, recycling, and beautification efforts in the Knoxville area, nominated the outdoor classroom “based on its ability to beautify and elevate the local landscape,” according to the nomination notice.

We congratulate the Town for being recognized for its efforts on ecological education and beautification, and we look forward to attending the ceremony.