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By Elizabeth Brown
Neighbors in downtown St. George are being honored for improving and beautifying their own backyards.
Vibrant St. George, an organization dedicated to preserving and enhancing the traditional neighborhoods of St. George, presented its 2007 Beautification Awards on Nov. 8 during Downtown Thursday Night.
Residential award-winners were the Georgia Springer home, the Mark Greene home, the Joan McGregor home and the Bill and Jewell Bringhurst home. Commercial and civic award recipients were Southwest Skin & Cancer, Inc., Southern Utah Neuropsychiatry, The Courtyards homeowners association, Dixie Regional Medical Center 400 East Campus, and St. George Community Arts Center Japanese Garden.
“The awards are not just for one-time beautification efforts,” said Vibrant St. George steering committee co-chair Susan Crook. “The owners have shown an ongoing commitment to maintaining the beauty and vitality of their neighborhoods in the traditional heart of St. George.”
Award categories included residential and commercial landscaping, exterior remodeling, tree stewardship and other property improvements.
For Georgia Springer, receiving a beautification award is a dream come true. After the death of her husband two years ago, Springer bought a 95-year-old cottage in downtown St. George and poured her energy into landscaping and remodeling the home, inside and out.
“I’m in love with this little place,” she said. “The last year and a half has been very difficult for me, but this is what’s kept me going.”
Springer has a talent for decorating, and for years has wanted to redo a cottage. The day she spotted the one she wanted – a quaint little home in downtown St. George – the home wasn’t for sale. But two days later a for-sale sign went up in the yard, and by the next day Springer had not only bought the cottage but also received a cash offer on the sale of her own home.
 “It kinda gives me the chills,” Springer said of the quick way things fell into place. She said she hired several excellent contractors and went right to work trimming overgrown trees and adding decorative rock, fences, an arbor, a new roof and many other attractive touches. The inside of the home was completely remodeled. Springer is excited to see that her efforts have yielded positive results and recognition
“This was always my dream, and now it’s something I can identify after everything’s said and done,” she said. “So I’m pretty proud of myself.”
Crook said she is pleased with the dedication shown by Springer and the other award recipients. Her hope is that more downtown residents will take pride in their neighborhoods, nominate each other for awards, and instigate some friendly competition in property improvement.
Crook, a landscape architect, noted that the city of St. George presents its own Shade Tree Beautification awards, which are open to the entire city. She explained that Vibrant St. George focuses more specifically on the traditional downtown area bounded by 700 East, 700 South, Bluff Street, Diagonal Street and the Red Hills on the north.
Crook said that the Vibrant St. George awards grew out of a desire to raise awareness of the organization and its mission.
Vibrant St. George was conceived last year when Crook and a friend, Diane Tracy, were training for the St. George Marathon. Their training route took them through the traditional neighborhoods of St. George, where they noticed that “this is not the Dixie we remember from the 1970s and 1980s.” 
Crook had been a student at Dixie College in the early 1970s, and Tracy worked at the college in the early 1980s. Both women remembered an abundance of tidy homes and well-kept yards during those years, and they felt things had declined since then.
“There must be other people who feel the way we do,” Crook and Tracy speculated. They wrote a guest editorial letter in Dixie Weekly News and soon started receiving phone calls. Their letter became a catalyst for interested citizens to gather and discuss what could be done to revitalize downtown neighborhoods, and Vibrant St. George was born.
In addition to Crook and Tracy, the Vibrant St. George steering committee includes Gail Bunker, Craig Skousen, Cimarron Chacon, and Bonnie Pendleton. In keeping with their slogan, “Commitment to the future – Respect for the past,” the group has proposed several projects to enhance “the heart of St. George,” such as planting trees, improving traffic patterns, preserving open spaces, promoting community gardens, and completing restoration projects.
Vibrant St. George also plans to promote the preservation of historic town lot gardens. Crook explained that the Mormon pioneers who settled St. George and other Utah communities used a unique layout for their towns. Rather than follow the New England model of streets built around a central town green, Mormon settlers used a “Plat of Zion” design as instructed by Brigham Young.
The plat called for a grid of one-acre blocks, each containing four home lots. These lots were located in the center of town, surrounded by communal fields outside town. Each lot provided space for a home, a vegetable garden, a milk cow, and a stable for wagons and horses.
“Some of these historic town lots are somewhat intact, with gardens remaining, and they still have water shares,” said Crook. “In our rush to do infill planning, we should preserve the gardens that are still working, and encourage people to maintain these lots.”
Maintaining productive vegetable gardens could lead to another project Vibrant St. George is eager to support — the supplying of a local farmers market. Crook said that Sandy Lenois, director of Downtown Thursday Night, hopes to incorporate a farmers market into the calendar of downtown events. Vibrant St. George would like to be a partner in this venture.
Another follow-up program envisioned by Vibrant St. George is a “buy local” campaign. In partnership with Retail Association Downtown and Downtown Thursday Night, Vibrant St. George will encourage people to buy local produce and locally-manufactured products.
“The idea is to be more sustainable,” said Crook. “We ought to preserve our agriculture, our local farms.” She pointed out that creating our own food would ensure against having our food supply crippled by crop shortages in far-away locations.
Crook deplored the fact that some of today’s St. George residents don’t even realize we have agriculture here.
“The early settlers had big horticultural fairs, and a horticultural society. We should respect and celebrate our local agriculture,” she said. Whether planting a garden, buying local produce, or just taking an admiring stroll downtown, every resident can take part in St. George’s agricultural heritage.
For more information about Vibrant St. George, contact Susan Crook at (435) 773-7920 or scrookla@gmail.com.

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