The Mississippi Renaissance Garden Foundation, Inc.

Bringing Back the Beauty Site Award Standards

It is the goal of the Mississippi Renaissance Foundation, Inc. to recognize businesses, organizations and governmental entities for their part in helping to Bringing Back the Beauty of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. This award is presented based on the following criteria for their grounds and landscaping:

• Overall pleasing and inviting appearance of the site.
• Noticeable green space around the site.
• Landscaping with trees, shrubs, and or flowers.
• Site enhancements such as sculptures and other amenities.
• Neat and tidy signs.
• Clean and well-maintained parking spaces and parking lots.
• Year-round maintenance and upkeep of the landscaping.
• Year-round maintenance and upkeep of the buildings.
• Cleanliness of the entire site, including sidewalks, entryways, parking lots and street curbs.
• Extraordinary efforts to create a place with an inviting atmosphere.
• Overall show of community and civic pride.

It is a well-known fact that people are less likely to litter if an environment is kept clean and if laws are followed and codes enforced. Civic pride can be taught, and it can be contagious. Businesses are encouraged to establish high standards of appearance, and urged to encourage their employees to help maintain those standards and pass them on to others. Specific suggestions (which are also criteria for becoming and staying a "Bringing Back the Beauty Site") to maintain and/or improve any site are:

1. Provide cigarette receptacles outside your entryways.
2. Provide trash cans around the perimeter of your site. Keep them emptied regularly.
3. Provide copies of MRG's "Bring Back the Beauty" suggestions to your employees.
4. Provide automobile litter bags for your employees and encourage their use.
5. Educate employees on the unsightliness of tossing cigarette butts onto the streets.
6. Ask employees to pick up any litter they see on the site. Implement an awareness of litter and how unsightly it is.
7. Once or twice a year, steam clean or power washes your sidewalks and parking lots to remove unsightly spots from various origins (i.e., spitting on sidewalks, auto oil leaks).
8. Hose off accidental spills from sidewalks and entryways regularly.
9. Require lawn services to bag trash rather than blow it onto vacant lots, onto other property, or down storm drains.
10. Eradicate grass that grows in sidewalk cracks all the way to and into the street curb.
11. Keep street curbs in front of your site clean and picked up.
12. If you are a small business that cannot afford a lawn service, make an effort to do it yourself, or provide incentives to employees who might do it, such as paid time off.
13. Keep drains and holding ponds clean, well-mowed and edged.

Is there a nonresidential site (not big corporate or big development) that you would like to submit for our Bringing Back the Beauty Award?
Download and fill out this form and submit it to the address on the form.