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Master Gardeners in Carver and Scott counties joined together to form a unified group in 1987, with a grand total membership of five. Since those humble beginnings, the group has grown to its current size of 100 active members. These members regularly average over 50 hours per year and keep busy with many yearly projects. In 2005, the group volunteered a total of 5447 hours at a value of $95,595 (Using the national rate of $17.55 per hour for the monetary contribution of volunteer time established by Independent Sector).
A few major projects are highlighted below:
Arboretum Answer Booth Each Sunday, Monday and Friday throughout the summer months, our members staff a Q&A booth at the Arboretum. This is a perfect opportunity for our interns to work with certified members, and to learn from each other.
Community Gardens Groups of around 10 members each take active roles in organizing, providing training, and supplying pest identification at community gardens in Chanhassen and Shakopee.
County Fairs Separate committees organize and staff Q&A booths for all five days at each county fair. Members conduct one or two demonstrations per day to highlight good gardening practices.
Displays Members create attractive educational displays on various topics to be used as teaching aids in community education classes and at Q&A booths.
Display Gardens We design, build, plant, and maintain teaching gardens at both Fairgrounds.
Garden Fever! Our public outreach day is traditionally held in late March and includes four wonderful speakers, several Master Gardener displays, commercial exhibits, a fabulous silent auction, and great camaraderie among the 200 or so attendees!
Help Desks These clinics are held at two sites (one location in each county) each week during the summer months. Members trained in diagnostics, plant pathology, and/or entomology diagnose insect and disease samples submitted by the public.
Marketing Current projects include Craft Days to create items for sale at silent auctions and Cookbooks which are sold at various functions to help supplement our funding. Our first Garden Tour held in July, 2005, was another successful marketing effort and will be repeated in 2007.
Nursing Homes/Hospitals Groups work with these institutions to provide training for staff in maintaining plantings, providing therapeutic gardening for residents, and teaching classes for staff, residents, and the community. We are currently working with one hospital and two nursing homes.
Q&A Booths A great opportunity to spend a few hours in various public settings, we staff these booths at town expos throughout the two counties along with events at private businesses (nurseries, grand openings, etc.), Home & Garden Shows, City to Country self-driven tour, Arbor Day celebrations, and Arboretum special events
Teach Classes A large part of our mission to reach the public with University- based research involves teaching classes through libraries, community education, formal school settings, and by invitation to other organizations. We teach upward from 100 classes yearly on a variety of topics, and are introducing our own lecture series in 2006.
TV Programming Our TV Team creates high-quality garden programming broadcast on local cable-access TV. Members work both behind (filming, editing, voice-over) and in front of the camera
Yard and Garden Line Members take one week at a time to monitor this line and answer public gardening questions. We respond yearly to over 1,000 consumer phone calls.
Youth Education This committee designs new projects yearly to help reach youth. Recent projects included involvement with outdoor education through Soil & Water Conservation in both counties.
