BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – Birmingham is not Babylon, but a company here has had a critical hand in creating hanging gardens that have already earned national attention and are now a finalist for national recognition.

JTI Companies Inc. designed, engineered and fabricated the Hanging Gardens of the Perez Art Museum Miami.

The project is now vying for an Architizer A+ Award in the "Products and Landscapes" category. Public voting for the award ends March 21.

The “Products and Landscapes” category seeks to recognize companies who make and use “products that interface with the natural environment in new and novel ways,” Architizer said.

Unlike the Hanging Gardens of Babylon – one of the seven wonders of the ancient world – JTI’s hanging gardens use some modern tech and techniques.

Birmingham’s JTI fabricated the superstructure for all seven chambers of the museum’s vertical greens. Each chamber has eight to 11 custom fiberglass tubes for a total of 67. The tubes vary in length from 28 to 51 feet and are 18 inches in diameter and weigh as much as 1.5 tons.

Patrick Blanc is a French botanist who architect Herzog de Meuron commissioned to design the greenery for the Perez Art Museum Miami.

The result is the type of projects JTI hopes to become known for fashioning.

“We have been creating a new identity for ourselves over the past decade—from fabricating behind the scenes to being on the frontlines of design and engineering entire projects— and this expert appreciation tells us to keep going,” Jason Brough, president of JTI, said in a statement.

He said he hopes JTI becomes the company that ambitious architects and developers call on when they are ready to “build something memorable.”

Since its founding in 1990, JTI has worked on a number of “memorable” projects such as a fountain half the size of a football field in Brooklyn, N.Y.; an aquatic pyramid in Galveston, Texas; and now the hanging gardens in Miami.

The Architizer A+ winners will be announced on April 1, 2014.