Green thumbs go to school to learn in-depth gardening at the recent Vancouver MG Basic Training
Felicity Stone, a recent graduate from the Vancouver Chapter Basic Training has written a fabulous article about us in the Vancouver Sun
I thought I knew a lot about gardening. Then I enrolled in the master gardeners program at VanDusen Botanical Garden.
Apart from books and articles, trial and error, much of what I knew was picked up from knowledgeable friends, neighbours and family members. I began to wonder if I could help other gardeners who were struggling on their own.
The master gardener program, which originated at Washington State University in the early 1970s, does exactly that. WSU extension staff, there to provide agricultural advice, were being overwhelmed by questions from backyard gardeners. The solution was to educate volunteers to provide gardening advice to the public. The program spread throughout the U.S., Canada and the U.K. The Vancouver chapter, now with more than 450 members, started in 1982.
I applied to join Vancouver Master Gardeners at VanDusen. The first step is the easiest. I outlined my gardening and volunteer experience, explained why I wanted to become a master gardener, then attended an information meeting where I took a basic gardening test.
The second step is more challenging. The MG basic training course covers botany, soil quality, fertilizers, lawns, ornamental and food plants, pruning, propagation, site specific planting, entomology, pest and weed management, and plant identification, diseases and diagnosis.
January through March, every Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., I joined 46 other students in VanDusen’s Floral Hall. We were a diverse bunch: male, female, various backgrounds and ages, from throughout the Lower Mainland and beyond. The level of gardening experience also varied: some students worked in the horticulture industry, while others were novice gardeners.
We were divided into groups of seven or eight students plus a mentor/guardian angel, a qualified master gardener who kept us on track, marked our homework and answered our questions.
The program emphasizes sustainable gardens that thrive with minimal inputs of labour, water, fertilizer and pesticides, but there is nothing minimal about the course itself. I not only learned an enormous amount of new information, I had to forget some of the old stuff (Bone meal in the planting hole? Wrongo: transplant fertilizer is more effective. Roses inevitably get black spot and powdery mildew? Not necessarily: new varieties are disease resistant).
Experts in botany, entomology and horticulture gave in-depth lectures — one speaker noted that what he was about to cover usually took years of university. There were also hands-on workshops. We brought soil from home and analyzed it, pruned rose bushes, took cuttings, divided perennials, planted seeds, picked out seedlings and went into the garden to look at plants and identify problems. I began seeing everything differently. The brown spot on my kitchen counter, was it fungal or bacterial? Oh, coffee.
Reading and research assignments took me a couple of days each week. (Sample question: The apple tree that I planted five years ago still has no sign of fruit. Why?) The homework not only reinforced and supplemented the classwork, it made me familiar with the texts and reference books. Master gardeners are not expected to remember everything, but rather where to get correct information. (Or as a speaker at this year’s Vancouver Master Gardeners Spring Seminar quipped: “How many master gardeners does it take to screw in a light bulb? I don’t know, but I can look it up and get back to you.”) Even the final exam is open book — thankfully, as the passing grade is 85 per cent.
Like (beneficial) insects, master gardeners go through several stages before emerging fully qualified. After basic training, students become master gardeners in training. They must complete 10 hours of continuing education (I took a pruning course and attended the spring seminar; attending garden club meetings also counts) and 65 hours of community outreach (volunteering at information clinics, community projects, etc.) to graduate as qualified master gardeners — a title that is for volunteer (not commercial) use only.
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Masters/8329130/story.html#ixzz2SiL4QUHI
