Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden nationally recognized for Winter Festival

The Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden have been awarded multiple honours for their Winter Lights Festival held annually during the holidays.

The 2025 Communities in Bloom National, International Symposium and Awards held in Stratford Ontario recognized Nikka Yuko with a “5 Blooms – Bronze Rating”, alongside the “Outstanding Achievement Award for the WinterLife Award.”

Nikka Yuko says utilizing the garden for year-round opportunities and its community engagement helped achieve national recognition.

The Winter Light’s Festival will celebrate its biggest one yet this season for its 10th anniversary, with themes inspired from the northern Japanese province of Hokkaido, a sister province to Alberta. The festival will begin on November 29th and run into next year to February 28th.

Landon Hickok

Landon is a recent graduate of the Radio and Television program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) in Edmonton. He previously obtained a diploma for Christian Ministries at Home Church Bible College in Red Deer, Alberta. For years since, he worked on church media with Home Church and later with City Life church in Leduc, Alberta, working on event live-streams and video productions. At NAIT, he was part of the student-run NAIT NewsWatch news program. He led topics ranging from school athletics to local news and international headlines such as the October 7 attack in Israel in 2023. Outside of news, he spent internships in Edmonton sports with the Oilers of the NHL and the Stingers of the CEBL. Now in Lethbridge, he’s here to produce stories to help inform all and to honour Jesus Christ with his work.

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