Valencia County gardeners can win cash in summer yard contest

A well-tended yard in Valencia County can do more than boost curb appeal. It can cut food costs by producing vegetables and fruit, and it can hold down water use when the design leans on xeric plantings, mulch and other desert-smart choices.

That is the idea behind the Valencia Extension Master Gardeners’ countywide Yard & Garden Contest, which runs from June through September and is open to all Valencia County residents at no cost. The first judging date is Saturday, June 20, and entries for that round must be emailed by 5 p.m. Wednesday, June 17.

The contest calendar for 2026 lists four judging dates: June 20, July 25, August 22 and September 19. Entries are due by email three days before each posted date. The application asks for the entrant’s name, address, contact phone number, the month they are entering and a brief two-to-four sentence description of the garden.

Judges will tour each entered landscape and choose one winner per month, looking for yards that are attractive, creative and well maintained while still reflecting the realities of gardening in a high-desert county. Vegetable beds, fruit trees, pollinator plantings, drought-tolerant front yards and other earth-friendly designs all fit the contest’s focus.

The program is sponsored by the Valencia County Cooperative Extension Service at New Mexico State University and is aimed at Valencia County’s urban, non-commercial horticultural community. Its training topics range from soil management and fruit and vegetable production to entomology, pest management, plant pathology, weed identification and control, landscape design, tree care and turf management, which helps explain why the contest prizes more than just pretty flowers.

Dave Cooley, who chairs the contest committee, said the effort is meant to promote residential gardening in the county and give people a place to share their creativity while earning recognition. That approach has already produced a range of winners. In 2025, monthly winners received $100, and the contest recognized yards with drought-tolerant plantings, pathways, pollinators, vegetables, fruit trees and wildflowers, including a Los Lunas yard owned by Rachel and Guy Bate.

Residents who want to enter can email davcoo817@gmail.com. The Valencia County Extension Office is at 404 Courthouse Road in Los Lunas. The office is also listing free gardening workshops on June 13 and June 27, along with a hands-on salsa-making and preserving class on June 16, underscoring how the county’s extension work ties gardening to food savings and self-reliance.