"Becoming a Master Gardener" page 2 by Christi Sweaney

The different classes included Basic Botany (this one came the closest to being a standard college class), Landscape & Design, Vegetable Gardening, Annuals & Perennials (my favorite), Trees in the Landscape and others that discussed insects and other plant problems. Each class had its own assigned professional who spoke. Two I enjoyed a lot were the tag team of ladies who taught the Trees in the Landscape class. Both were funny and entertaining, which makes presentations like this – the three hours, two days a week kind – much easier to sit through. I was actually surprised by the ability of all the speakers to keep the group’s attention. I’m sure there are many of you who would look at the schedule and tremble with delight at the Understanding Insects class, but I went into this gig wanting to know more about planting flowers, and lots of them, and since I was here, maybe a few vegetables. I really didn’t think I cared about bugs or botany, but it turns out, they are pretty important parts of gardening and I was able to learn a lot because the speakers weren’t reading everything off their Power Point presentations or talking like a Conehead from Saturday Night Live. They were funny, knowledgeable and they didn’t act like a Ph. D teaching a general education class. They wanted to be there as much as I did.

The Ozarks suffered a horrible ice storm in January, so repair and replace were big topics of discussion throughout the course. I learned how to trim a tree, or at least I learned how to instruct my husband on how to trim a tree. I learned that no matter how much I didn’t want to cut down the sugar maple in the back yard that really looked sort of okay with only a few branches left, it was actually not a keeper because it would eventually succumb to its injuries and would never look pretty again. I learned that the grubs I’ve been throwing over the neighbor’s fence might have been good butterfly larvae. I learned that the reason my maple in the front yard has looked so puny for the past couple of years might just be because it has bugs eating, or boring, on the inside of the bark. You see, you can’t know that unless you know what to look for because they’re on the inside. Get it? I wasn’t that interested in fruit trees, but after the Fruit Crops class I did start to think that maybe I would plant a blackberry bush. I learned that what I plant doesn’t have to go into the ground in the perfect place. If I don’t like it, I can move it or give it away and plant something new. I learned that if it dies, plant something else. Mourn it and move on.

The class ended with a tour of the two gardens that the Master Gardeners of Greene County maintain. The ice storm played a number on one of them and many of the trees were lost. The trees were well established, which resulted in a need to rethink a lot of plantings, since the sites quickly changed from shady to full sun. There are a lot of people who work those gardens and it shows. They were beautiful, even early in the season, before they were at all showy. The volunteer portion of the program is where those people come from. I have signed up for two of the beds at one of the gardens. The “Bed Head” is not a groupie, but is the person in charge of the bed and they let me know when they will be at the bed and/or what needs to be done. I look forward to meeting them and learning from them.

We celebrated the end of our classroom time with a banquet. It was most definitely the worst part of the whole experience. The first portion, the real reason we were there, consisted of Gaylord presenting us with our certificates officially stating we were Master Gardeners and our Master Gardener Pin. That’s the one I had my eye on from the beginning. Remember why? It says MASTER on it. Many of the folks who would stop by to visit our classes had on one of those green pins that said their name: Polly Petunia, MASTER Gardener. The main reason I went to the banquet was to get my pin. The rest of it was dumb humor in the form of a rather poorly done skit done by the social committee. I could have left with my pin and been happy. I should have.

Another way to volunteer is to work the hotline and it is one from which I hope to learn a lot more. No, not a crisis hotline, or at least not like one you might be envisioning, but a gardening hotline. I called it just a few days ago myself to ask a question about the bushes in the yard at my daughters’ school that got nipped by the recent hard freeze. I spoke with someone who sounded like he was probably new enough to be from my class, although I didn’t ask. He consulted with someone else about my question and I got the answer I needed. It is an opportunity for the new Master Gardener to teach as well as learn.

I recently got to wear my shiny MASTER Gardener pin to a charette given by the local Habitat for Humanity. I had to look it up and a charette is “a final, intensive effort to finish a project, especially an architectural design project, before a deadline”. You can make it sound as French as you like, but the dictionary says it is pronounced shuh-ret. Anywho, the definition makes sense because drawings of landscape designs were being presented by students from the local community college to the families who were about to receive their new Habitat homes. The Master Gardeners were asked to be there to answer questions and to advise. The students fielded most of the questions, but I had an opportunity to act like I knew what I was talking about.

I can accumulate volunteer hours by just being a gardener. I can volunteer to plant trees at the elementary school, which I did last weekend. I can trim those bushes that got frosted. I can work at the fair, but I don’t see myself signing up for that one. The Discovery Center in Springfield, an urban science museum, has a roof garden that the Master Gardener program maintains and I would love to take my girls there and garden with them. I can show a Girl Scout troop some gardening tips. I can work with the Social Committee, someone needs to. There are many things I can do to tally up my hours.

Becoming a Master Gardener has been very rewarding and I am sure that I will be learning much more in the months and years to come. Of course, my main goal was to be able to go into my own yard and design and create my own space of nirvana that I would be able to appreciate and be proud of by myself and with my family and friends.

That, and the shiny green pin.

Previous 1 2 Home

Hit Counter