The redesign of AACC’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial will begin this spring.

Last year, the school’s Martin Luther King Breakfast Committee held a competition for landscape architecture students to redesign the area surrounding Maryland’s only statue of the civil rights leader.

The winning student, second-year architecture student Kathryn Ellerbrock, earned a $1,000 scholarship.

Ellerbrock beat nine other architecture students to win the competition.

Robert Lowe, an architecture and landscape professor, said the competition was an opportunity for students to get hands-on experience to see what it’s like to work with a client and take actual measurements.

“The students got to interview what the committee thought the space needed,” Lowe said. “I encouraged them to be a little ambitious to show what the space could be and not worry about the budget.”

Ellerbrock’s design will incorporate Japanese Dogwood trees and Radiance Abelia shrubs on either side of the statue, as well as benches for observers.

The committee initially asked for a design that made the space more inviting for students and passersby.

Ellerbrock’s original diagram extended the renovations down the steps of the memorial, but wasn’t used because of budget constraints.

“There’s physical elements that need to be purchased like seating and benches and plant material,” Lowe said.

Dr. Deidra Dennie, AACC’s chief diversity officer and a member of the Martin Luther King Breakfast Committee, approved the final design.

The committee had asked for a design that features low-maintenance landscaping and the addition of more color to the memorial.

The college will begin planting trees and shrubbery in April.