Talk about making lemonade from lemons! During the COVID shutdown of public gardens, Denver Botanic Garden realized that the eerie yet peaceful feeling of the empty gardens gave a sense of returning to nature. Then it hit: Mother Nature was making her entrance in this unusual year. She was again reminding us that SHE is in charge and will dictate how we were all making our entrance gradually back to normalcy. As visitors were slowly allowed entry back into the gardens, there was a new quiet, a new calm in their manner; a respect and appreciation that might not have been there before. And the spectacular AAS Winners were there to provide beauty, refuge, and respite. DBG’s conclusion: “Mother Nature has made her entrance in this year of 2020. Through her beauty, and vengeance of this year’s natural disasters and global pandemic, and social unrest, she is forcing us all to wake up, act, and see with clear eyes all that is around us, good and bad. She is asking us to decide what our legacy will be.”