Sedgwick County horticulture students win national contest

Identifying such esoteric plant material as the seed from a Jerusalem artichoke, a team of four teens from Sedgwick County 4-H took first place Monday in the National Junior Horticulture Association Judging Contest in Lexington, Ky.

It’s the first time in years that the local 4-H Horticulture Judging Team has taken the national honors, extension agent Bob Neier said Tuesday as the team was making its way back to Wichita.

Michala Zimmerman of Valley Center, a freshman at Hutchinson Community College, took first place in the country in the three-part competition that covers plant identification, produce judging and a test of how things grow.

Zimmerman said that her dad grew up on a farm, and “I’ve grown gardens all my life,” but the contest was hard because it included tropical plants and trees she’d never heard of before.

“Trying to be diligent about trying to study those is very hard,” she said, crediting coaches Alice Linnebur and Evelyn Neier with pushing the students hard but not so hard that they got sick of the material.

Zimmerman won $100, and each member of the team got a medal. The team won the state competition to go to nationals, Neier said. Last year, the Topeka team was the state representative and took second place at the contest, he said.

The Sedgwick County team is made up of two sets of siblings: Zimmerman and her sister Alyssa, 15, who took fifth place, and Daniel Behrens, a senior at Norwich High School, who took third, and his sister Anna, who took 11th place. Their cumulative scores made them the national winners.

This story was originally published October 14, 2014 at 8:34 PM with the headline "Sedgwick County horticulture students win national contest."