Pre-Conference Tours - Oct 4
Before the October 2024 GMGA conference on the UGA Griffin Campus, over 100 Master Gardeners kicked off a weekend of learning by participating in campus tours and labs, gaining special insights on campus research projects and hands-on experience in plant propagation from tissue culture. MGEVs explored the UGA Griffin Campus and its 3 research centers and 6 research departments as they learned from UGA experts about current work in turf, controlled-environment agriculture, household pests, and made a special stop at the USDA Seed Laboratory. While the main storage facility is in Fort Collins,CO, there are other repositories located throughout the U.S. Lab participants in the Tissue Culture Lab went home with test tubes of plant material they propagated themselves as a result of the unique opportunity to receive instruction in a specialized facility. The MGEV State Program Office enjoyed putting together these pre-conference events for volunteers and hearing from MGEVs as they reported back what they learned.
During the 2024 GMGA Conference held October 4-5, 2024, in Griffin, program coordinators had opportunity to share what they are doing in their local programs. They were invited to create a poster to share about a great project or a special program coordination effort in their county program. Posters were printed and displayed in the Mule Barn Café during the conference. In total, five posters were shared. UGA’s Center for Urban Agriculture joined in the fun by reviewing and scoring the posters. The Center also offered prizes to the top-scoring posters. This was the first time such an opportunity was offered to coordinators. Results and winners can be found here.
Controlled Environment Agriculture
Dr. Andrew Ogden
Types of Turf for Georgia
Dr. Clint Waltz
Auto Mower Evaluation
Dr. Melanie Harrison
Seedbank Explanation
Dr. Dan Suiter
Conference – Oct 5
This year’s Conference was held on the UGA Griffin Campus in the Stuckey Conference Center. It was co-hosted by the UGA Griffin and the Henry County Master Gardeners. Most of the directions for the locations of the activites were centered around the lovely mascot. The infamous Georgia Dawg.
The general welcome and introduction was made by Carol Hunter, the event coordinator from Henry County. Attendees were given a continental breakfast and viewed the multiple offerings for the Silent Auction prior to the beginning of the Conference. The Conference was opened by Dr. Phillip Williams, Acting President of the Georgia Master Gardeners Association, Inc. followed by a welcome to the UGA Griffin campus by Dr. Sheri Dorn, State Coordinator for the Georgia Master Gardener Extension Volunteer Program.
First item on the agenda was the 2024 GMGA ANR Award. This year’s award was presented to Christen Thomas of Paulding County. A full description with pictures can be found here.
As part of the 45th Program Anniversary celebrations, UGA had a group of proud MGEVs create four quilts for the anniversary. Per Sheri, three of the quilts were presented to the UGA Griffin Campus on October 5, 2024, as part of the celebration. (The fourth quilt, known as “Pink Crumbs”, was donated to the Silent Auction to benefit GMGA’s grant program that supports MGEV projects.) This quilt was purchased by Melanie Heider. We hope she gets years of service out of it.
May these quilts, lovingly selected and stitched together with care, be reflective of the amazing and dedicated people who serve as Georgia Master Gardener Extension Volunteers and be treasured for a long, long time to come. All of the beautiful quilts are on display in the Oct 8, 2024 edition of the Trellis Blog by Sheri Dorn.
Brie Arthur, New Era of Foodscaping
The first speaker of the day was Brie Arthur, a celebrated bestselling author and distinguished horticulturist. Brie has been captivating audiences with her dynamic presentations and groundbreaking gardening insights. She gave a lively presentation on a New Era of Foodscaping with many examples of how she has incorporated items from her garden into her landscaping. Many of her plants were items that eventually ended up on the kitchen table. She has also transformed her own yard from “green balls” and straight lines into ones with tremendous curb appeal. She has reduced the amount of maintenance and water needed by reducing the amount of maintained lawn. Brie was one of the speakers in the Breakout Session speaking on Cultivating a Cottage Garden in the South. It is always an entertaining session to listen to her speak.
Mario Camberdella, Celebrating Local Growers’ Contributions
Mario discussed the network of growers and nurseries ServeScape has developed throughout Georgia. Customers can surf their network for plants and, based on location, the order will be filled by the closest provider. This lowers costs and provides the freshest products from the grower. This allows the products to be shipped directly from the grower versus sitting on a hot parking lot.
Joe Lamp’l, Growing a Greener World
Joe Lamp’l presented a series of examples of how gardening has been used to assist people in their lives and resolve various emotional problems. His examples of the use gardening included:
1 Working in a garden to resolve issues specifically associated with PTSD. 2. Setting up community gardens in food deserts 3. Working with nursing homes to prepare small landscaping plots that older residents can care for.
Additionally each participant could participate in two Breakout Sessions. The choices are listed below:
Breakout sessions I:
SPEAKER 1: Brie Arthur: Cultivating a Cottage Garen in the South
SPEAKER 2: Lyndy Broder: Pinwheel of Perserverence
SPEAKER 3: Niamke Boykin: Worm Your Way to a Great Garden with Vermicomposting
SPEAKER 4: Trecia Neal: Wet Your Beak, How to Attract Birds to Your Garden
Breakout sessions II:
SPEAKER 1: Elle Barker: Cultivating the Art of Urban Homesteading
SPEAKER 2: Trecia Neal: Plant Myths and Why They’re All Wrong
SPEAKER 3: Mike/Judy Cunningham: No-Till Gardening
SPEAKER 4: Sheri Dorn: Project GROW: A New Curriculum for MGEV-led Programming
A splendid silent auction was held including excellent items that had been donated by vendors as well as personal donations. Several lovely baskets filled with items that represented local area Master Gardener groups were also available. Individuals also won gret door prizes throughout the Conference. Just some of the items for the silent auction are presented to give examples of the quality of the items available. The big door prize provided by Soil3 was a 1 cu yard bag of either mixture of Soil3 delivered to the door of the recipient. The collage below is just some of the items up for bid:
GMGA would like to thank the Henry County Master Gardeners and the UGA Griffin Facility for coordinating the 2024 Conference. We would especially like to thank Dr. Sheri Dorn and the faculty at UGA Griffin who conducted the tours and presentations on Friday. The Griffin campus allowed us to use their campus facilities, set up tents for lunch and provided the carts for transportation from location to location during the demonstrations on Friday.