By Jill Fugaro

Marin Master Gardeners designed and built three temporary demonstration gardens at the Marin County Fair July 1-5 and hosted over 1500 diverse visitors and 450 attendees at 15 workshops over the five days. Visitors met and talked with the Marin Master Gardener teams of two docents who guided them through the exciting admiring space that was built into straw bales, straw wattles and compost made from last year’s fair food waste. The compost was cured into “black gold” in the bio cell at Marin Sanitary Services and then provided the nutrient rich soil in which our plants were installed.  We utilized what we called “The Good Bug Bad Bug“ IPM Kiosk, on loan from UC Davis, to help visitors identify pests and beneficials in their home gardens. Visitors learned about non-thirsty plants, edible gardening in a small space and how to attract honeybees and butterflies to their home gardens by proper plant choices. Each day Marin Master Gardeners gave workshops at 12 Noon, 2 PM and 4 PM.

Since growing food is now a “cool” thing to do we fit neatly into all three tenets of the Marin County Fair theme of COOL GREEN FUN.  Marin Master Gardeners shared how we created a new twist on veggie gardening for visitors’ backyards with a Salsa Victory Garden. Visitors learned how to grow all the ingredients for a delicious salsa recipe in just a 4’ x 6’ space and provided two salsa recipes in the garden and on our website. Three varieties of hybrid and heirloom tomatoes from our annual plant sale were the backbone of the garden. Each of the other nine varieties of plants went into the pot to make a tasty salsa. Marin Master Gardeners showed how to combine edibles with ornamentals like sweet alyssum and marigolds as well as herbs like borage for edible flowers in the vegetable garden to attract beneficial insects. We encouraged families to garden together to see how fun, easy and stress-busting it was to grow their own food in their backyard.

Visitors could join in the Dr. Seuss Garden where wild, crazy, whimsical shapes illustrated that non-thirsty plants don’t have to be boring! Visitors learned how low maintenance and drought-tolerant plant choices could be the right plant in the right place for our Mediterranean climate. Visitors took away postcards printed specifically with our Water-Wise Plant Selector information and website  www.marinmg.org so they could actually see color photographs taken by Marin Master Gardeners of  the drought-tolerant beautiful plant choices suitable for their Marin climate and view plants that save water.

The third garden for visitors was the Give Bees a Chance Garden, our colorful pollinator garden. Visitors learned why honeybees are important to agriculture—that some plants are entirely dependent on bees for their reproduction; they learned about planting colorful (yellow, oranges, blues and purples to attract bees because bees see red as black!) nectar-filled native plants that create habitat for both bees and butterflies. 

The entire demonstration garden design, construction, installation and workshops were videographed by an independent educational nonprofit called Ecoverdemedia. By agreement with our UCCE Director, copies of the edited videos will be provided to UCCE free of charge by the company in exchange for their ability to share this green information in other educational venues.

In addition, there was a double-fold center page of our fifteen Marin Master Gardener expert workshops over five days printed in the Marin County Fair Magazine that mailed to 90,000 Marin residents: