Master Gardeners

February 2024

Linda Hamilton

When I started my professional career 45 years ago, it was in rural upstate New York as a Cooperative Extension Agent in the area of Community Resource Development. Along with my fellow Extension Agents in Agriculture, Horticulture, and Home Economics, we were tasked with bringing research-based information from the state’s Land Grant College (Cornell University’s College of Agriculture) to bear on practical problems of households, landowners, community enterprises and local government. As educators and facilitators, we strengthened individuals’ and communities’ ability to successfully deal with real life problems, --from farm pests and diseases, making a family food budget stretch further, to teaching newly-elected officials how to efficiently run a public meeting using Robert’s Rules of Order. It was, and as Cooperative Extension continues to be, all about empowering people with reliable information so they can solve their own problems and improve their lives and communities. My early first-hand experience of this approach has influenced all the work I’ve done since.

An interesting example of the Cooperative Extension approach with added benefits, is the Master Gardener program (long-standing in the Land Grant Colleges of many states). To complement the work of professional Extension Agents in the area of horticulture, members of the community from almost any background are offered a faculty-led in-depth training program of several weeks covering the fundamentals of sustainable home gardening, geared to that region and including: botany basics, soil health, herbaceous plants, vegetable garden planning and productivity, entomology basics, Integrated Pest Management, plant diseases, tree fruit, tree care, pollinator plants, small fruit, integrated landscape design, and volunteerism. (That last is the program’s special sauce.) If the course is completed successfully, the participant can be certified as an Extension Master Gardener with the commitment to provide at least a certain number of hours (typically 50-100) over the next two years volunteering in the community educating others on home horticulture topics. 

This is an innovative, person-to-person way to “extend” research-based/scientific information from the university into the community with benefits for both the conveyor and recipient. The recipient often finds help solving a problem or improving a garden situation; the Master Gardener has the satisfaction of finding and passing along reliable information to fellow garden enthusiasts; the community benefits from more people successfully growing food and tending environmentally-friendly landscapes, as well as new supportive relationships between residents, which build trust and help knit communities together.

University of Vermont (UVM) Extension began offering this program 1991 and it has quickly grown strong. And they have repeated the model with a parallel Master Composter program in support of home composting. 

To facilitate certified Master Gardener activity in the community, UVM Extension maintains a registry of qualifying community projects seeking volunteer expertise, where Master Gardeners are encouraged to volunteer as part of their community service. There are currently more than 90 educational gardening projects throughout the state, with Master Gardeners and/or Master Composters partnered with schools, libraries, municipalities, museums and historical landmarks, farmers’ markets, and nonprofit organizations to provide educational exhibits, information tables, and demonstration gardens that teach about sound gardening and composting practices. The range of projects is delightfully wide and the results especially satisfying because of the person-to-person interactions.

In Charlotte we have two such community projects, regularly benefiting from Master Gardener volunteers: Butterfly Garden at Quinlan Covered Bridge on Lewis Creek: created with native plants and pollinator-attracting perennials that are suitable for our heavy clay soil, with the purpose to provide food for pollinators and wildlife, and demonstrate what neighbors could replicate in their gardens; and Charlotte Library Educational Gardens: part of the Library’s Seed Library suite of programs which encourage and support community members to grow more of their own food using eco-friendly and sustainable methods, and to support local biodiversity and soil health; pollinator-friendly flowering plants, herbs and other edibles are attractively combined to demonstrate multi-dimensional gardening in this public space.

Another important component of the program is the UVM Extension Helpline, staffed by Master Gardener and Master Composter volunteers. This is reachable by phone or email, and serves many hundreds of Vermonters a year with home horticulture and integrated pest management (IPM) information. Yes, one can search the internet or library for information about gardening problems, and there is plenty available. But the significant advantage of the UVM Extension Master Gardener Helpline is that it draws on information and science which is relevant specifically to Vermont conditions. And it has the added benefit of direct one-on-one interaction between people, which is generally a richer and more satisfying form of education because it allows for questions and clarifications. That is something a computer screen or book cannot offer.

To explore becoming an Extension Master Gardener or Master Composter yourself, see uvm.edu/extension/mastergardener/extension-master-gardener-program. To improve your own garden, consider learning through volunteering with one of the Master Gardener projects in town mentioned above. (Email Seeds@charlottepubliclibrary.org for more information.) And don’t hesitate to talk with a Master Gardener on the Helpline when you have specific questions (uvm.edu/extension/mastergardener/helpline). They will be happy to help.