Firm’s walking on water

Chalk up another big award for a Chico firm. Land Image Landscape Architects & Planners, a full-service landscape and irrigation consulting firm, is being recognized this year with an Excellence in Irrigation Honor Award from the American Society of Irrigation Consultants.

Specifically, the award is for the firm’s design and installation of the Verbena Fields Restoration Project, the nature preserve created on 25 city-owned acres bordering Lindo Channel in the Longfellow neighborhood. As a release notes, the project “creates and restores a mosaic of habitats including flood plan, riparian, wetlands, grasslands and oak woodlands.”

Its temporary irrigation system designed to establish the plants before being removed in three years was designed by consultant Paige Gimbal (pictured), who worked for Land Image at the time but now has her own firm, WaterCounts.

The ASIC awards are independently judged by professors of irrigation science at Cal Poly Pomona. This is the third time Land Image and Gimbal have been recognized, having previously garnered awards for work on the Downtown Plaza and DeGarmo Park.