New Piedmont Master Gardener Projects

The Piedmont Master Gardeners Association (PMG) is one of 60 Extension Master Gardener programs in Virginia, a part of the Virginia Cooperative Extension, associated with Virginia Tech and Virginia State Universities, our state’s land grant universities. Master Gardeners are trained volunteer horticulture educators whose mission is to promote sustainable, research-based horticulture in the Charlottesville-Albemarle community. PMG sponsors a variety of projects and events, funded by the Piedmont Master Gardeners Association 501(c)(3) non-profit, individually and in cooperation with other local organizations.

The Organization’s Work

PMG has been building a solid reputation in the community since our founding in 1989. The organization’s work has always reflected the issues of the day. In recent years, as the association has grown and as environmental and social concerns have impacted both global and local communities, PMG has broadened its projects to address these topics more directly, within the scope of its horticultural education mission.

The effort gained momentum in a September 2019 event called The Future of our Landscapes in a Changing Environment, held in Charlottesville’s Paramount Theater, to celebrate PMG’s 30^th anniversary. Strong community turnout for an excellent environmental program provided impetus to assess PMG’s direction and consider new initiatives.

In February 2020, a participative program at a monthly member meeting demonstrated member support for increased emphasis on sustainable horticulture and food insecurity issues while working to diversify our audience and membership and reach underserved areas of the community.

A Strategic Planning committee, formed at about the same time, worked through a Covid-impacted 2020, communicating virtually with the membership, laying out goals to address the identified emphasis areas. By early 2021, PMG was able to reach out to the community to explore possible new projects that would meet plan goals. Despite initial uncertainty as to how things would develop, it quickly became apparent that the community, aware of PMG’s prior work, welcomed our participation in a range of projects consistent with the new direction.

A few of these projects are summarized below.

Sustainability

Sustainability includes reducing chemical use, adding diversity and native plants to our environment, conserving water while managing runoff, and reducing solid waste generation. While most of the new projects are aimed at multiple goals, those below focus largely on sustainability:

• PMG’s Community Information Rack project which distributes and displays horticulture-based flyers at local garden centers, allied with the Virginia Native Plant Society in 2019 to promote native plants, urging partner retailers to stock more natives and make them more visible to customers. Covid delayed implementation, but this year as a partner in the Plant Virginia Natives campaign, PMG began providing the businesses with a package of promotional materials. It includes a banner that says: “Find Native Plants Here” (see photo), a new brochure for information racks titled “Why Plant Natives” and bright red “Virginia Native” stickers to place on native plants in their stock. By building awareness of the importance of native plants to ecosystems and their reduced maintenance requirements once established, the project aims to encourage both sellers and buyers to increase native plantings in our landscapes.

• A partnership project with Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville (Habitat) assists Habitat “Partner Families” with the landscaping of their new homes. The Partner Families are offered support and, if they choose to accept it, PMG volunteers meet with them to jointly work on landscape design and plant selection. Favorable pricing was established with a local garden center that has agreed to maintain an inventory of native shrubs and perennials. In addition, the Charlottesville Area Tree Stewards have joined the partnership and will provide a source for native trees and planting guidance. The meetings, involving the families in “planting day” and providing ongoing care and maintenance support provides PMG the chance to educate families on basic horticulture and the benefits of native plant ecology while contributing to the security and advancement of hard working lower income families. It is a satisfying project, bolstered by complementary alignment of Habitat and PMG mission and goals.
• Master Gardener volunteers have been working this year to put together two projects that will roll out in the spring of 2022, complementing our successful Healthy Virginia Lawns project.  They will be called Healthy Landscapes and Healthy Stormwater Management. All three will provide assistance to homeowners and HOAs in planning sustainable landscapes and are a part of our conservation landscape efforts. They will include an on-site survey by trained volunteers, soil testing as appropriate, and a document to address the issue(s) at hand. While Healthy Virginia Lawns focuses on sustainable lawn management, the new projects will incorporate environmentally sensitive design, low impact development, non-invasive native and beneficial plants, and integrated pest management. The goal of the three projects is to create diverse landscapes that protect clean air and water, support wildlife including birds and pollinators, and provide a healthier, more attractive human environment.
• PMG is developing a project with the Thomas Jefferson Planning District to deliver materials and workshops to promote composting of food and yard wastes. It will include home, community, and contract composting options as a means of reducing the volume of organic waste going to landfills and the resulting negative environmental impacts.

Food Insecurity

With food insecurity affecting 30% of area residents during the Covid crisis, PMG initiated several projects aimed at helping reduce it:

• Recognizing that many gardeners produce more food than they can eat, the Share Your Harvest project encourages donations of extra produce to local food banks and food pantries. A tab on our website: piedmontmastergardeners.org, provides access to a list of emergency food providers that accept donations of local produce, including when and where to deliver it and how to prepare it. The site includes an interactive map to help gardeners locate donation sites, lists references dealing with food waste and related topics, and a reporting sheet to keep track of donations. The project went live in July so missed part of this year’s growing season, but PMG is encouraging gardeners to plan an extra row next year to help the hungry.

• The Community Garden Partners project was started to support community gardens by providing many kinds of assistance from mentoring to gardening help. Partnerships were built with the Bread and Roses group at Trinity Episcopal Church (see feature image), Cultivate Charlottesville’s new garden at CATEC, several International Rescue Committee (IRC) gardens where recent refugees grow food for their own and market uses, and the garden at the Yancey Community Center in Esmont where volunteers grow food to support the local food bank.

PMG contributions have included arranging expert advice through the Virginia Cooperative Extension, helping improve soil by installing cover crops and sheet mulch plots and hands-on gardening alongside volunteers, basically teaching-by-doing. At an IRC garden, PMG planted native plants to stabilize a stream bank and built a rain capture system to provide a convenient water source for nearby growers. Gardeners love to garden and these projects allow hands-on gardening while staying true to our educational and food insecurity related goals.

Youth Gardening

PMG has been involved with the City Schoolyard Gardens after school programs for several years, but program changes caused us to initiate some new projects:

• This summer PMG partnered with the Charlottesville Parks and Recreation Department to provide six weekly gardening programs at Clark, Greenbrier, and Jackson-Via Elementary schools. Activities included programs on how seeds work, plant anatomy, and terrarium design. Each finished up with planting and taking planted items home. There were also programs on soil, water, and preparing food from fresh produce, including home-made salsa which got rave reviews.
• Between the fall of 2021 and spring of 2022, we will initiate programs at Mary Carr Greer, Stony Point and Crozet elementary schools in Albemarle county:
  • At Greer Elementary PMG volunteers are working with teachers and first and third grade students to meet learning standards through hands-on activities in Greer’s living lab, which includes a uniquely landscaped patio area with a variety of gardens,  including a rain garden, a planned butterfly garden, and raised vegetable beds. The raised beds will be built and fenced as we work jointly with the school, the Building Goodness Foundation, and volunteer landscape architect and construction managers. Plans are drawn and construction cost estimates are in process. Serving the most diverse student population in Albemarle County, this project addresses our sustainability, diversity, education, and accessibility goals.
  • At Crozet Elementary School, PMG will help plan and support student involvement in relocating existing gardens due to a building expansion now underway. The work will involve rain, pollinator, and native plant gardens as well as a riparian buffer. It will begin in the spring.
  • Stony Point Elementary currently has an after school garden program run by a PTA parent. The school has a greenhouse, raised beds, pollinator, and native plant gardens, plus a courtyard Japanese garden with a waterfall and pond where invasive plants will be removed and replaced with natives. PMG’s intention is to support the program to enable it to involve more students while promoting our sustainability and education objectives.

Accessibility

Another PMG goal is to partner with local organizations serving groups that can benefit from participation in gardening activities:

• The Center at Belvedere serves a senior clientele, many of whom have an interest in gardening. In its partnership with The Center, PMG will offer 8 events per year to interested participants. They will range from virtual and in-person presentations to educational events involving design, construction, maintenance, and education sessions in rose and pollinator gardens that Master Gardener volunteers are building. The pollinator garden will feature a 70/30 native/non-native plant population to illustrate how to create an ecologically productive garden. A “pollinator gardens in pots” display for folks with small deck or patio spaces has been planted.

• Our Therapeutic Horticulture project is a merger of related projects with several “helping” organizations including On Our Own, Georgia’s Friends and a new site at the Jefferson Area Board for the Aging (JABA) into a single umbrella project. The goal is to use horticulture to promote growth, healing, and improve participants’ quality of life while building environmental stewardship with an audience facing a variety of physical and mental challenges. For example, our team at JABA created a sensory garden with aging and disabled adults in a daycare setting. JABA representatives noted that participants were visibly affected as they enjoyed the outdoors, laughed, and reminisced during the meetings. This led to a nomination for a United Way “Caring for Community” award and participation in a JABA-UVA study on whether nature-based activities can improve the emotional, physical, and cognitive health of seniors. We hope to add more sites to this project over time.

A Positive Future

At PMG we think that these projects are both exciting and potentially significant contributors to improving the natural environment and social welfare of our community. Combined with our longer term projects, they provide a broad base of programs that support the love and science-based practice of horticulture throughout the region. We hope that readers agree, that you will be motivated to participate in these and similar activities in your local communities, and that this article has expanded your understanding of what Extension Master Gardener programs are all about. We invite your comments and insights.

Photo credits: Uncredited photos submitted by various members of the Piedmont Master Gardeners and edited by W Sublette.