Alternative Group snags pair of awards

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This article was published 11/02/2023 (1055 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Brandon company has brought home a pair of awards to kick off its 25th anniversary.

Alternative Group announced earlier this week it had won two accolades from the Manitoba Nursery Landscape Association.

The company received the award of merit for landscape design for its work on a “woodland retreat” project and its garden centre won an award of merit for its operations.

Founded in 1998, Alternative Group runs landscaping, yard care, excavation and garden centre businesses from its compound on the southeast corner of 34th Street and Patricia Avenue with a workforce of more than 100 employees.

The woodland retreat project involved designer Ephrem Tamene creating a design with a fire pit, an outdoor kitchen and bar, a fireplace with nearby seats and a hot tub for a private property.

Office manager Emma Griffin told the Sun the company found out they were finalists for the awards last month but decided not to tell staff until they received word on where they’d placed.

In a staff meeting Thursday, employees were called into the board room to hear the good news as co-owners Chris and Karin Griffin connected digitally from a vacation out of country.

Emma Griffin said making a design like the one they won an award for starts with the client coming forward with an idea of what they want and the budget they have in mind.

“We’ll start with a consultation,” Griffin said. “We’ll go, we’ll measure, we’ll look at the site and take photos from each different angle. Then we’ll do some site measurements and a do a bubble drawing before it’s approved.”

Creating the design, she said, is a roughly two-week process that involves sketching out a 2D model and then making a 3D model that incorporates topographical elements.

The hardest part of these designs, according to Griffin, is dealing with changes of elevation for the terrain as well as fitting the design into an existing space.

Once a design is complete, a customer is shown the plan and is given a virtual flyby using that 3D model, sales and administration officer Leonie Dedieu said.

Some customers choose to implement the design themselves, while others choose a company like Alternative to do it for them.

“I think it’s very rewarding for all the hard work each of our staff do,” Griffin said about a design being brought to life. “There are a lot of components and a lot of people who go into the process to get it all completed.”

Different options can be provided if a customer wants a project to be built as a single item or in phases spaced out over months or even years.

For the garden centre award, the criteria takes into account not only how well a business does at selling its wares, but also how it participates in its communities.

“It’s a very calming environment,” Griffin said of the centre. “It’s very organized. We also have a lot of things we give back on like our ladies’ night. We did different donations to shelter to stuff like that. We have workshops throughout the seasons to keep people engaged.”

“I think a lot of people think it’s just literally plants, but it’s so much more than that,” Dedieu added.

In previous years, Alternative Group has won several awards at the provincial level. In 2019, the company won a national accolade from the Canadian Nursery Landscape Association for residential landscape maintenance.

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