- Author: Lucy Heyming
By Lucy Heyming --
Master Gardener Conference 2014 - “Growing Together”
A great place to get ideas and learn a lot!
From the wonderful welcome reception hosted by the Fresno Master Gardeners on Wednesday evening, to the Friday morning awards presentations, over 600 master gardeners from all over California had the opportunity to learn about gardening topics important to them and meet great like-minded people from all over our golden state. Riverside County Master Gardeners were well represented at the conference, which was held at the Tenaya Lodge near Yosemite. It was a beautiful setting. Nine Riverside County master gardeners enjoyed the three day event with classes on topics like: propagation techniques, succulents, native bees, composting, heirloom seeds, edible landscape design, butterflies, seed saving, native plants, backyard chickens and many more. At the “Market Place”, attendees could buy neat gardening items, books, handmade items, jewelry, and much more (I got a wooden snail motel to put in my vegetable garden. I am looking forward to catching snails in an environmentally safe way and feed them to my chickens).
On Friday morning the Search for Excellence winners gave presentations to highlight their projects. For the first time at a State Conference, Riverside County Master Gardeners submitted two projects and two posters; one for our docent and workshop project with WMWD, and the other for our Gold Miner project. As you know, Riverside County Master Gardeners were awarded FIRST Place for the Gold Miner project. We will receive $500.00 for this award. The presentation I gave outlining this project was well received by the conference attendees. The winners of second and third place were also wonderful projects. Santa Clara County's project was a community garden that their master gardeners began and now operate at a local hospital. The Orange County Master Gardeners developed a series of videos that teach composting and are available on YouTube. Posters from all the applications were set up around the room for us to view.
The Statewide Master Gardener Conference is held every three years. The next one, in 2017, is promised to be held in southern California. That will allow more master gardeners from our area to take part in this wonderful opportunity to learn and share.
The photos below are of the Riverside County attendees and some of their spouses at the Thursday evening dinner.
From left to right: MGs Karen Fleischer, Sandy Starkey, Michelle Harding, Nancy Johnson (new MG who just graduated in June)
From left to right Hal Pedigo (husband of Pauline) and MG Pauline Pedigo.
From left to right: Mike Jenkins (husband of Dona), MGs Dona Jenkins, Lucy Heyming and Frank Heyming.
From left to right: MG Cindy Peterson, Dave Peterson (husband of Cindy), MG Laura Afansev and her husband Bob.