MIDDLEBURY — LandWorks, a landscape architecture, planning and design practice that until recently was headquartered in the Marble Works in Middlebury, received two of the 11 Vermont Public Places Awards Program honors celebrated at a June 8 ceremony.

The program is sponsored by the Vermont Chapters of the American Society of Landscape Architects and American Institute of Architects, as well as the Vermont Planners Association and the Vermont Urban and Community Forestry Program.

LandWorks, which is now in Panton, received an Honor Award for their “New Vision for Alburgh Dunes State Park,” and a Merit Award for the recently completed City Center Park in South Burlington. The Alburgh Dunes Project was a complete re-visioning of the popular state park situated along the three-quarter-mile-long sand beach on Lake Champlain in Alburgh. Working collaboratively with Vermont Department Forests Parks and Recreation officials, the design team addressed a number of user issues and created specific responses to environmental challenges, as well as the need for a better parking and circulation system, and the desire to have more amenities. Leading a team that included MacClay Architects and Engineering Ventures, LandWorks oversaw the creation of a new natural playground, stone seating walls that double as flood control, porous paving parking lots, new signage and kiosks, and a new park building with seasonal restrooms and staff facilities.

The firm received its second award, a Merit award, for City Center Park in the heart of South Burlington’s new downtown. Together with collaborating consulting engineers from Engineering Ventures, the design team took on a challenging landscape to create a low impact, natural park design to serve all of the city’s population. The site is considered a floodplain forest and is bordered by neighborhoods and a tributary of Potash Brook, which has become a focal point for the site. The result is a unique design, using onsite and local Vermont materials and sustainable principles, to implement meandering paths, native plantings, natural play areas and quiet landscapes in the midst of Vermont’s only true urban region.

LandWorks engaged elementary school students from the nearby school to help in the design process. The end result is a park with one-of-a-kind natural play structures as well as contemplative spaces that provide recreation and respite from city life for everyone.