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A growing garden

Published 4/26/2008 in News : Area coverage

Gardening is just something Glenita Dearden grew up with.

She and her brother would play in the dirt, her parents would plant the garden and her mother would can. When Dearden married, she started a vegetable garden of her own.

And while her children are now grown and out of the house, Dearden, 46, keeps the garden around for herself. She enjoys the challenge of it, as well as learning something new every day. Without learning new things, "you just kind of get stale," she said.

In 2001, Dearden saw something in a newspaper about the Master Gardener program through Kansas State Research and Extension. At that time, she enjoyed vegetable gardening and was wanting to lea rn more about it. She decided to participate in the program and was in the program's charter class in the southwest Kansas area.

She's continued with gardening. And whether it's summer or wintertime, she said, "there's something green around here all the time."

According to K-State Research and Extension, Master Gardener is an educational volunteer program that involves the common bond of a love of gardening and sharing information throughout the community. Master gardeners receive training in horticultural disciplines and then volunteer with educational projects.

Another agent

Ward Upham, state coordinator for the Master Gardener program, has overseen it since 1996, but the program originally started in 1980 in Johnson County.

The idea was to provide volunteer hours across the state and help agents and those with K-State Research and Extension expand services to communities across the state through volunteers who receive research-based training and then spread that information to the public.

Those with the program typically get 40 hours of training in exchange for 40 hours of volunteer service, Upham said, adding they usually end up giving much more than they get.

Kansas master gardeners averaged about 75 hours apiece for 2007 -- that adds up to more than 81,000 hours donated by a little more than 1,070 master gardeners last year, representing about $1.4 million worth of time and work that wouldn't be done otherwise, Upham said.

About 200 new master gardeners were trained in 2007, Upham said, and about 300 participants attend the annual advanced trainings. For Upham, the program serves as an extension to what agents are able to provide to communities.

Overall, he feels the program is growing, saying he and others will train 30 master gardeners a year in Johnson County, but they'll have about 90 apply for the program. And in a year's time, the county's volunteer-run hotline for gardening receives about 15,000 questions.

The information the gardeners receive runs "the whole gamut," according to Finney County Extension agent Dean Whitehill, who helps oversee Finney County's and other southwest Kansas master gardener programs. Training topics include lawns, trees and shrubs, and fruits and vegetables. And the gardeners enhance services provided by local extension agents through presentations in classrooms and service clubs, one-on-one consultation, and educational displays and demonstration gardens.

One of the latest efforts, he said, is the demonstration garden outside the Finney County Extension office.

The Finney County Master Gardener program costs $90 and lasts about eight weeks, with classes held on Wednesdays.

The first class was in 2001.

Phil Sloderbeck, an entomologist with the Southwest Research-Extension Center, became a master gardener in 2002 and wanted the opportunity to get more training. The reward, he said, is being able to share ideas, information and have a two-way conversation on topics that interest him.

There's always been a percentage of the population interested in gardening, Sloderbeck said, but he's seen renewed interest in the activity from a growing number of people wanting to know where their food's coming from.

A collective effort

A sunflower -- the symbol representing the program -- sits, laid out in stone in the middle of the extension office's demonstration garden.

Steve and Kandy Michel, part of the 2001 charter class, run Prairie Wind Aquatics, and get told a lot by others that they have "a green thumb" when they see the Michels' garden.

"They don't know the hundreds of dollars that we've killed," Kandy said of the learning process, with Steve adding that they're always trying something new.

Every garden has its failures, and they're pretty sure the demonstration garden -- a new venture -- will have a few.

But that's all part of it, according to the Michels. They're not perfect gardeners and others aren't either, but they're all sharing information and ideas.

Western Kansas Community Foundation is helping support the garden. The brick used for the Americans with Disabilities Act-accessible walkways is former city street brick donated to the garden, and the Michels and other volunteers give of their time when they're able to work on the garden.

The group has a plant sale planned for 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. May 10, and they're planning to use some of the revenue to support work in the garden. What they don't sell, Kandy said, they hope to donate to the town of Greensburg.

While the venture is in its first year and there's plenty of work yet to be done, Kandy and Steve can walk through the garden, pointing to where they see a certain type of plant or feature growing.

What they hope, aside from flowers blooming and other green things appearing, is that people who come to the garden will learn some of what can be grown and survive in the area, as well as get the best use of their money when buying plants.

'Another room'

There's Betty and Barney -- the bull snakes.

Then there's the squirrels that roam around the yard, and the birds munching on seed at the feeders.

And don't forget Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs -- Shirley Buller can't see them, but that's because Snow White's inside the little wooden cabin her husband, Vernon, built beside the pond, and the dwarfs are away at work.

It's another world in Buller's backyard. And while it's not in full bloom, yet, she's got about 30 flats of plants waiting to go in her front and back yards.

Buller, who lives near Montezuma, looks at her backyard as more an extension of her home, which her father built and she now lives in.

"That's another room out there," she said while sitting at the kitchen table and looking through a big window out to the back yard.

Buller had seen the phrase "Master Gardener" before and always "wanted to know what they knew." So in 2002, after reaching a break in her life, Buller decided to go for it and went through the training in 2003, receiving her Master Gardener certification. Now, with years of gardening experience under her belt and a master gardener, Buller spends her time filling her yards with creations, as well as taking at least five to 10 phone calls a day from those with questions during gardening season. She also writes a gardening column, "Hoe and Tell," and she sits down every night at about 10 p.m. to reply to e-mailed questions.

And she loves it, she said.

From gardening, she gains satisfaction, creative urges and also exercise, as well as the joy of serving and helping others become better at something she enjoys immensely.

"It adds years to your life and life to your years," Buller said of gardening.

For more information on the Finney County Master Gardener program, contact the extension office at 272-3670.

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