THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 29, 1996 TAG: 9603280160
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 171 lines
IT WASN'T A run-of-the-mill club meeting when Middle Plantation Garden Club members met outside in a member's yard on a chilly March morning.
The women, in old clothes and tennis shoes, were down on the ground getting their hands dirty. They were filling window boxes and other planters with Styrofoam peanuts, potting soil and a selection of perennial herbs - salad burnet, parsley, chives, thyme and oregano.
Master Gardener and herb expert Barbara Brawley wasn't your ordinary meeting speaker either. Dressed in dungarees and a white sweat shirt with a colorful bouquet of flowers on the front, she was cheering the women on, helping them out and doling out advice on herbs.
``Herbs in containers should be fertilized occasionally, those in the yard, never!'' Brawley told the women. ``Fertilizer will take the flavor from the herbs. Herbs have to be stressed to release their oils.''
The Styrofoam peanuts also were a topic of interest. Used in place of rocks for drainage, the peanuts make containers lightweight and easier to carry, Brawley explained.
As a member of the local Master Gardener speakers bureau, Brawley had gathered up the peanuts, herbs and potting soil and had come to give a hands-on demonstration at the garden club's monthly meeting. The visit was just one of many volunteer activities for Brawley and other master gardeners, all highly trained volunteers with the popular Virginia Tech Cooperative Extension Service program.
All across the city this time of year, the volunteers with the green thumbs are weeding, planting, pruning, fertilizing, even talking to plants in public places from the Hampton Roads Research and Extension Center on Diamond Springs Road to the Coastal River Room at the Virginia Marine Science Museum.
Master gardeners are planting heirloom vegetables at historic Francis Land House on Virginia Beach Boulevard and they are preparing to give away trees at the public libraries on Arbor Day.
Not only are they talking to the plants, as gardeners are known to do, but they are talking to people too, as Brawley did on her visit to the garden club. Master gardeners with the group's speakers bureau gently persuade folks to be more caring of the Earth. They tell them how to grow water-wise plants, how to use less pesticides and fertilizers and how to plant more trees, among other ecologically sound gardening tips.
One of the group's more far-reaching educational programs is the Growline, a horticulture information hot line operating out of the agriculture building at the Municipal Center. Residents can call the Growline with their gardening questions and get answers from master gardener volunteers who answer the phone.
Those are just some of the things that master gardeners do around the city. For 14 years, this group of highly trained green thumbs have been working hard to make Virginia Beach an environmentally safe and pretty place. Of 900 active master gardener volunteers in the Virginia Tech Cooperative Extension program statewide, about 150 are active in Virginia Beach.
``In the state, master gardeners gave about 30,000 hours of volunteer work a year, 10,000 of them in Virginia Beach,'' Brawley said. ``One-sixth of us did a third of the volunteer work in the state!''
Come July 1, master gardeners will have to undertake even more volunteer work. The program that has served Virginia Beach so well will undergo a big change as a result of budget reallocations in the Virginia Tech Cooperative Extension and master gardeners will no longer have any extension staff support for their program.
That means that Horticulture Extension Agent Randy Jackson will not be involved in management of the Master Gardener program or even more importantly in training new master gardeners. His energies will be directed toward the horticulture industry and the environment, Jackson said.
Prospective master gardeners take a 60-hour course in the fall that, until now, Jackson has organized. The course covers everything from botany to entomology, from plant pathology to plant problems. After completing the course, master gardeners must keep their hands in by contributing at least 45 hours a year of volunteer work.
``Instructors are crucial to Master Gardener training,'' Brawley said. ``The training is arranged by Randy. You have to get people knowledgeable in their field.''
Jackson, who often teaches up to four of the classes and typically attends all of them, will no longer be able to even attend a class on state time. ``To teach a class, I will have to take annual leave,'' he said.
Now a master gardener will have to take on the role of training coordinator and plan the Master Gardener training course and select the speakers. Virginia Tech will offer an in-service training course for coordinators, said Diane Relf, state extension specialist at Virginia Tech. Training materials, such as the Master Gardener Handbook prepared by Virginia Tech experts, also will continue to be for sale to those taking the course,
Gael Daugherty, a new master gardener who took the training course last fall, is one person who would hate to see the program change. ``It was the best thing I ever did,'' she said.
``I learned how much I didn't know,'' Daugherty went on. ``There also are so many opportunities for volunteer work and the community benefits so much from this.''
Daugherty puts in her volunteer hours at the Hampton Roads Research and Extension Center, a Virginia Tech facility that conducts basic plant research. That morning, she was picking yellow leaves off geraniums with Gloria Winiker, who heads up 12 master gardener volunteers at the center. The two were working in a greenhouse which was half full of the big lush white, pink, magenta and red flowers.
They are grooming the geraniums to be in tip-top shape to sell at the Master Gardener Plant Sale in April. The geraniums have been coddled and tended to for the better part of two years and they will bring $7 to $10 apiece at the plant sale.
``These are beauties,'' Winiker said.
The sale, the group's main fund-raiser, has generated enough money to endow a yearly $1,000 horticulture scholarship as well as to fund educational projects. For example, the gardeners pay for materials for the Ready-Set-Grow program, the popular activity the gardeners carry into the schools.
The funds also pay for all the potting soil, pots and flats used at the research center where each year the master gardeners grow new varieties of seeds produced by seed breeders and wholesalers across the nation. They test the plants' suitability for the Hampton Roads climate in the research center's perennial and annual trial gardens which are open to the public.
That day in the greenhouse, in addition to working with the geraniums, master gardeners were transplanting 38 new varieties of snapdragons and impatiens from the seedling room to flats. This year overall, they will probably test more than 300 varieties of new plants for their adaptability to local growing conditions.
When the weather warms, the plants once again will be transplanted, this time to the outdoor trial gardens. The master gardeners then transplant themselves outside and maintain the outdoor gardens throughout the warm weather. At the end of the year a written report on the results of the plant trials is sent to the seed breeders.
``If people would take the time to come and see them, they would know what to plant in the fall,'' Winiker said. ``They can call the nurseries and tell them what they like.''
Although the Master Gardener Program has dedicated and hard working members like Winiker, Brawley and Daugherty, there is no club president. In essence Randy Jackson has served as president, Brawley said.
``We've been so fortunate and Randy is so good,'' she went on. ``A lot that he takes care of we take for granted that it will just be done.''
As of now, there's only been a lot of thinking and talking. Master gardeners haven't devised a program that will operate minus Jackson's help.
``I do think the program will keep going,'' Brawley added. ``There's something about gardeners who want to share their plants and share information.'' MEMO: GARDEN INFORMATION
The Growline, 427-8156, operates from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through
Friday March 1 to Oct. 31. Call with your gardening questions, to
schedule a speaker or for information about the Master Gardener
Program.
Get a free tree from master gardener volunteers from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
at Kempsville Library and from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at both the Central
Library and Great Neck Library on Arbor Day, Friday, April 12.
The Master Gardener plant sale is from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. April 27 at
Pembroke Mall. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by L. TODD SPENCER
ON THE COVER: Master gardener Gloria Winiker waters geraniums for a
fund-raiser at the Hampton Roads Agricultural Research Station in
Virginia Beach.
Staff photo by STEVE EARLEY
Master gardener Barbara Brawley, center, teaches a seminar on herb
growing to members of the Middle Plantation Gardening Club.
Photo by L. TODD SPENCER
Tahiti snapdragon seedlings were among the variety of plants being
transplanted at the Hampton Roads Agricultural Research Station.
Staff photo by STEVE EARLEY
Oliver Whipple, right, carries a tray full of lettuce as he and John
Gehre, left, and Edith Causey plant spring vegetables at Francis
Land House.
Photo by L. TODD SPENCER
Joyce Alcorn, Vivian Ashbacher, JoAnn MacDougall and Gael Daugherty,
some of the volunteers at the Hampton Roads Agricultural Research
Station, transplant seeds.
by CNB