|
Muskoka Parry Sound Master Gardeners
The group began to organize with the help of Helen Austin, then President of the Huntsville Horticultural Society in 1992. As the members took a two year correspondence course from the University of Guelph, our first graduates technically formed the Muskoka Parry Sound Master Gardeners in 1994.
Since that time, we have worked to become a self supported volunteer society dedicated to the spreading of the love of gardening to the general public. We raise funds by having a yearly "Gardening Night" in the spring where we present a well known gardening expert to speak to the public. We have had such notables as Mark Cullen, Ed Lawrence, Marjorie Mason Hogue, Paul Zammit and many more as our speakers. For this evening, we collect numerous garden related gifts from local businesses - and ourselves - as door prizes and these are always well received by the winners.
Our mandate is to give gardening advise through appearances by our members at Horticultural Societies, Flower Shows, Farmers Markets, Fall Fairs, Seniors Residences, Communities in Bloom and anywhere else we might be invited to attend. Some of the members have appeared on local T.V. shows, radio shows, and have written articles for local newspapers.
Our members have many varied areas of interest ranging from specializing in perennials, shrubs and trees, roses, vines, ground covers, container gardening, greenhouse growing, propagating from seed, pond culture, herbs, vegetables, and just about any other type of gardening you could imagine. If we get a question to which we don't have the answer, we maintain "We will find out". To put it in a nutshell - we all just love gardening!
In addition to doing our volunteer work of giving gardening advice to the public, we also donate gardening books to our local libraries, pay an annual fee for each member to Master Gardeners Ontario Inc., help our Master Gardeners in Training pay for their education, and we all take yearly educational updates. At the present time, we have twelve active members and two Emeritus members on leave.
We would welcome enquiries from anyone interested in the Master Gardener program. Because of the cost of the educational program, we must limit our addition of new members per year, but our hope is to be able to accommodate anyone who is truly "Garden Oriented" and willing to join a hard working volunteer group. We do have a lot of fun too!
Our co-ordinator - Cindy Mortimer - can be reached at our Hotline number (705) 788-4358, and our Membership Co-ordinator - Linda Dronseika at (705) 789-3430. |