CELS News and Information

URI Master Gardeners' impact was large in 2009
Master Gardeners such as Susan Scotti help with Mallon Outreach Center educational programs such as the summer gardening series. Scotti also heads up efforts to donate vegetables and fruits to the RI Community Food Bank and other charities.	Master gardeners hold frequent public events such as this open house at East Farm where hundreds come to seek answers to gardening questions.

By RUDI HEMPE
CELS News Editor

URI Master Gardeners chalked up almost 41,000 hours as volunteers in various projects, community activities and research programs around the state in 2009.

Based on the national average value of Master Gardener volunteer time ($20/hour) the URI Master Gardeners donated services valued at $812,062 during the year.

Those figures plus many others are contained in the annual Master Gardeners Program Impact Report recently prepared by Rosanne Sherry, RI State Master Gardener Coordinator, who is based at the Kathleen M. Mallon Outreach Center under the URI College of the Environment and Life Sciences (CELS).

Master Gardener volunteer programs started across the country decades ago, mostly at Land Grant colleges and universities as one means of providing gardening, horticulture, food safety and forestry guidance to homeowners and small landowners. They are trained by extension agents, staff and faculty at colleges and universities. Extension agents generally supply assistance to large landowners, farmers and the green industry.

In Rhode Island, the Master Gardener Program is nearly 30 years old and has 358 active members—i.e. members who put in 20 or more volunteer hours a year. The program is guided in part by the URI Master Gardener Association that organizes projects and raises funds to support various educational outreach activities.

According to records prepared throughout 2009, the program’s volunteers directly contacted some 10,000 people during the year, reported Sherry.

Those statistics were generated via such URI-based programs as the Learning Landscapes Program (both at the Kingston campus and also the Roger Williams Park Botanical Center in Providence); the Plant-a-Row for the Hungry program; the Master Gardener hotline; the Clayton Rose Garden; research and trial projects involving the development of blight-resistant American Chestnut trees, development of a fertilizer using squid waste material, and rain barrel analysis; the GreenShare Garden School Day, the President’s Garden and joint projects with the URI Department of Natural Resources Science.

Fruit and vegetable growing projects, mainly at East Farm produced nearly 7,000 pounds of produce for the RI Food Bank and other charities, the hotline handled 2,899 calls and 1,310 e-mailed questions. Hotline calls have been declining each year (probably because so much gardening information is now available on line) and the hotline program will be reevaluated for 2010, wrote Sherry.

Master Gardeners also provided a speakers bureau service whose participants visited 22 venues.

The Master Gardener Association ran numerous operations around the state and among the most popular were the setting up of informational kiosks staffed by Master Gardeners. A highlight for 2009 was the biennial Master Gardener Garden Tour involving more than 30 gardens throughout the state.

East Farm, which has become a base of operations for the Master Gardeners logged 14,777 hours of work during 2009 provided by 223 volunteers. The Master Gardeners operate two greenhouses there, mow and prune both the apple and crabapple orchards, help maintain the blueberry section, operate a demonstration garden, run the East Farm Spring Festival and

Poinsettia Sale events and contribute labor on small maintenance and repair projects on URI facilities there.

At the Roger Williams Park Botanical Center, 24 volunteers worked as docents, guiding school groups and answering questions.

Community projects that Master Gardeners were involved in included the Asian Long Horn Beetle Survey, tomato late blight issues, judging of Future Farmers of American contests; free soil (pH) testing at numerous venues, tomato variety trials and training for the Boy Scout gardening and landscape architect merit badges.

The Mallon Outreach Center operated spring and summer gardening schools for the public.

Advanced training for Master Gardeners included a landscape design mini series which will be continued so long as interest continues.

In 2010 there will be two advanced certification series—one on Native Plants/Invasive Plants and another on Coastal Zone Landscape Design and Resource Protection. A new collaboration project, the second with the South Kingstown Land Trust, will be the restoration of a shoreline habitat in Matunuck.

The Master Gardener Association is also planning to continue its advanced education program by creating new workshops, some of them of a scientific nature, and bringing in regionally and nationally known speakers.

The association's affiliate, the Master Gardener Foundation of RI will be holding a gala in the fall of 2010 to raise funds for the Harvest From the Heart project which is setting up community gardens around the state.

Published: January 19, 2010.