When you’ve decided you’re ready to take your green game up a notch, get your masters: the URI Master Gardeners (URIMasterGardeners.org), that is. The group of over 600 experienced green thumbs is an educational and environmental resource for the state. The Master Gardeners’ website has everything from a Rhode Island seed calendar, telling you when to start planting, to a hotline number, manned every day between March and October, for you to call and get advice. The group has annual events like garden tours, and hosts plant sales every season at East Farm, their outpost in Kingston.
It takes 14 weeks of training and hundreds of hours in the garden to become a Master Gardener, studying everything from plant nutrition to gardening for wildlife and organic methods. Once you’re in, there’s a requisite amount of volunteer work: gardeners help maintain green spaces around the state, and regularly speak in schools and at garden clubs. One of the Master Gardeners, Barbara Gee (BarbaraGee.com), has even written a book: The Rhode Island Gardener’s Companion.
If your yard could use some help, don’t worry. There are workshops held by gardening experts all over the state this spring.
The Farmer’s Daughter in South Kingstown is a nursery and garden store that has greenhouses and artful plant displays as far as the eye can see, and offers extensive classes at varying levels of expertise. In April alone, there are classes in Easter Tablescape Design (April 13), Miniature Landscapes and Fairy Gardens (April 19) and Succulent Wreath Design (April 29).
Blithewold Mansion, Gardens and Arboretum in Bristol has some of the state’s most beautiful gardens, and they teach regular workshops on gardening, floral design and landscape design. They’re hosting a Gardener’s Round Table about growing begonias on April 28 and April 30, and a workshop on Creative Window Box Solutions on April 29.
Growing is one thing – growing safely and sustainably is entirely another. The Northeast Organic Farming Association of Rhode Island is a collaboration between farmers, consumers, gardeners and environmentalists to promote best organic growing practices. The group offers regular educational workshops, called CRAFT (Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training), which are free to the public. On May 17, there’s an on-farm workshop in Slocum on soil fertility, cover cropping and plant diversity.
Horticulturalist Jayne Merner Senecal believes the best way to learn something is to do it – so she’s teaching monthly hands-on gardening workshops at Earth Care Farm in Charlestown. April 22 will focus on sowing carrots, beets and potatoes and preventative insect methods. May 20 will focus on planting leafy vegetables. Any visit to Earth Care Farm, a compost farm that just debuted its new blend Rhody Gold, is an educational experience: the farm is turning 40 this year and Jayne is making a documentary about her family’s green story.
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