Plants and people have had a long relationship. Throughout our existence humans have depended on plants for food, medicine, and shelter. Plants have worked themselves into our culture, customs, and spiritual practices. We, as plant enthusiasts, likely have our own personal memories with plants that extend beyond traditional gardening. Many of these topics are fun and interesting.

What we do in the Master Gardener Program is connect people with plants and how to best grow plants. For many gardeners, this is easy. They often are ready to take the plunge with an educational program and learn the latest and greatest information about plants and gardening. Other people such as kids may not realize why and how plants can, and should be, important to them.

DO focus on growing ornamental and edible plants.  This includes:

• The right plant in the right place and good gardening practices;
• Pest management using an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach, our brains and lots of elbow grease, and, if necessary, the judicious use of organic and synthetic pesticides;
• The process of gardening for educational, vocational, recreational, and therapeutic uses.

We can also discuss how to harvest crops and post-harvest handling to get products into homes or food pantries.

We will discuss our educational themes in an upcoming section. These themes also help us stay focused.

The following topics, however, are outside the scope of this volunteer program:

• Medicinal and alternative health uses of plants
• Foraging for wild plants or mushrooms
• Food preservation and recipes
• Non-research-based practices
• We also do not teach about growing cannabis or marijuana

We recognize people will use plants to improve their own well-being through consuming, sensory stimulation, and spiritual practices; they may incorporate plants into their own traditions, including diet and medicine. Volunteers can honor people’s cultural relationships with plants.  At the same time we need to focus on what is our niche which includes safe interactions with plants and success in growing them. It is critical that information we provide is research based and results in us doing no harm to those depending on us for their gardening needs.

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