n April, Jack Templeton (above), a landscape design student in the Department of Horticultural Science, unveiled his senior research project, “Kilgore’s Organic Canvas: The Creative Use of Turfgrasses in Landscape Design.” At Kilgore Hall, Templeton designed and implemented an aesthetically pleasing landscape, using only warm- and cool-season turfgrasses. He explained that the idea of using turfgrasses in landscape design as a focal point seeks to reinvent turf as a dynamic, yet still functional, element of the landscape. The senior project is a new requirement in the landscape design curriculum, said Dr. Pat Lindsey, assistant professor of landscape design. Templeton, who won a 2003-2004 Undergraduate Research Awards Grant from the university’s Office of Undergraduate Research for his proposal, is the first student to complete the senior project. The resulting landscape at Kilgore is “a wonderful example of scholarship and artistry combined,” said Lindsey. “He offers an evocative revisioning of turfgrass.”

—Terri Leith