Two Alban Street residents, Jim Anderson and Rick Kuethe, this year garnered first-place honors in the 2017 Mayor’s Garden Contest, Anderson in the Large Yard Garden category and Kuethe in the Small Yard Garden competition.

Each tends a unique garden with respect to its landscape, plant variety, and personal taste while sharing a strong love for plants that has led them to take their own approaches to the gardening art and earned them this year’s “Golden Trowels” from the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.

Anderson, a renowned stained glass artisan by trade, uses his garden as a meditation space in which he can get lost and allow the plants to guide his hands. Since moving to Dorchester 20 years ago, he has worked ceaselessly on the grounds around his house, filling the space with as much green as he can. The plants flow along the sides of his home and lead to a small circular clearing in the back yard, where he occasionally hosts small dinners and gatherings of friends.

“I just love gardening, it’s something that’s in my blood,” Anderson said in an interview with The Reporter. “I get outside, and I feel like a farmer; I just wanna get my hands in the dirt.” Looking outside beyond his artfully crafted kitchen windows toward the greenery surrounding them, he added: “Gardens make a house. You look out and feel like you’re surrounded by green. I mean, we’re in Ashmont Hill, but when you look outside, it feels like you could be anywhere.”

Anderson said his garden could not be where it is today without the contributions of his generous neighbors, who, he says, have helped with the growth of his garden by giving him plants to add to his collection.

A brief walk away from the lush green of Anderson’s yard, is the smaller, yet equally impressive garden of Rick Kuethe. The career concert pianist and composer, a profession he has pursued for 40 years, calls himself the caretaker of his own garden. In his words, “The flowers are the stars, I’m just the caretaker.”

His “small yard garden” is now home to more than 4,000 types of plants and flowers, a collection he has dubbed “the united nations of plants.” In the short walk from the front lawn to the back yard, not a patch of space, or dirt, is spared as a variety of small, colorful flowers line the sides of his house and the opposite fence.

Farther behind his house is a octagonal area, with a row of flowering plants on all eight sides. In one corner, sitting under a small Japanese maple, is the essence of tranquility, a Buddha statue. Kuethe has added a few water features to add to the vivid nature of the place.

Explaining his gardening methods, Kuethe said, “Plants don’t need fertilizer or mulch, or any of that stuff.... they just need water and love.”

Like Anderson, he feels most at peace when he is in his garden. After he wakes up in the morning, he heads to the back yard to enjoy the space. “I love the shape of my garden because it’s 360 degrees of yard and whenever or wherever you look at it, flowers will greet you. They give me more love and happiness than I could ever give to them.”

The Mayor’s Garden Contest, now in its 21st year, was launched by the late Mayor Thomas Menino to recognize Bostonians who work to beautify their homes, and by extension, their neighborhoods. Neither Anderson nor Kuethe knew of the contest until friends suggested that they submit an application to Boston Parks and Recreation.

Winners of the competition were given their “Golden Trowels” and prize packages from the the Parks Department, Mahoney’s Garden Centers, and other sponsors at an awards ceremony held on Tuesday evening in the Public Garden. The first-place winners have also been entered into a drawing for a JetBlue Grand Prize – a round trip flight for two.

Other Dorchester residents to place on this year’s list of finalists: Maria Lopez (Third Place, Porch, Balcony, or Container Garden), Christine Langhoff (Third Place, Shade Garden), and Daryl Johnson and Rick Smith (Third Place, Large Yard Garden).