Beet 2024 12 December

Winter Dreams Summer Gardens 2024 Satisfaction Survey

• Thank you to all who attended this year’s WDSG event and for completing our Satisfaction Survey.
• We will be using the data to plan for the Winter Dreams Summer Gardens 2025!

JCMGA Membership Renewal for 2025 is now open.

• Remember to be included in the JCMGA Chapter Directory, you need to renew your membership by January 31, 2025.

JCMGA Chapter Directory Photo Contest

• We will again have a Photo Contest in January 2025. The photo chosen will be used for the front cover of the 2024 JCMGA Chapter Directory.
• For more details, see the enclosed article.

JCMGA Board Meeting

• Friday, December 13^th, in the SOREC Auditorium from 9-11:30 a.m.

The OSU Master Gardener Class of 2024 Graduation Celebration was a festive event on November 9^th.

Many of the students have jumped right in and contributed in a variety of ways to help our organization move forward.  They have worked in the Demonstration Gardens, the Plant Clinic, designed a logo for the Native Plants Nursery, designed a new gardening shirt, volunteered to work at informational table events at other locations, and worked at the Spring Garden Fair.

As Master Gardeners, we know what is involved in earning our cherished orange badge.  These students are to be commended for setting a goal to become a Master Gardener and persevering in their classwork, class discussions, and volunteer hours.

This year there were 40 students who graduated!  Twenty-two of those students attended the Class of 2024 Graduation Celebration.  Congratulations to all graduates –

Erin Amato                                     Ranie Baker                                                 Pam Cashwell

Adrienne Cheng                         Scott Dehaas                                              Blake Elliott

Tina Elliott                                      Cindy Gebhart                                            Shirley George

Jan Golden                                    David Gremmels                                         David Grosenbach

Tina Holmes                                 Michael Hornbeek                                       Jody Hulin

Alice Ingraham                            Teresa Jarratt                                               Kelli Loux

Gretchen King                              Deidre Krupp                                               Cody Maple

Bruce Millbank                            Cathy Millbank                                           MaryAnn Neely

Susan Neveu                                Louise Parker                                              Chris Peters

Carrie Redfern                            Gayle Reed                                                    Liv Schneider

Michael Sneary                           Kata Springer                                               Mary Schrouder

Johnny Schuh                              Victoria Suida                                              Doug Tollefson

Lindsay Trumbull                        Joe Ulloa                                                        Christ Veach

Kyle Williams

Thank you, Grace, for your leadership with this class!  Job well done by all!

Graduation is often symbolized by four-cornered caps and tassels in the air. For Master Gardener graduates, it is symbolized by a prized orange badge, a certificate of achievement, a bit of pomp and circumstance, and joining family and new friends for a graduation dinner. For the latter, graduates thoroughly dust off all the garden soil on their face and hands and briefly dispense with the real symbols of their passion – muddied boots, straw hats, bandanas, and jeans stained at the knees.

Looking back on my own first day of class, it was remarkable to realize that I had finally found those kindred spirits whose eyes lit up as soon as plants and gardening and soil became the common language. All Master Gardeners, whether long-standing MGs, or newly minted graduates, have felt awestruck as we encountered a deeper understanding of the impact we have on the web of life.

The Master Gardener program exists to educate graduates in the art and science of gardening. Importantly, the program’s additional goal is that Master Gardeners share their enhanced skills and knowledge of gardening and environmental issues with family and friends. As the saying goes, a single drop of water hitting a still pond makes many ripples radiating outwards – so too, each Master Gardener is a single drop that can touch many people.

The Jackson County Master Gardener Association heartily congratulates its recent graduates on the completion of the program! To our newest Master Gardeners, may you delight in the joy of lifelong learning and gardening! We hope you’ll remain active members and reap the benefits of volunteering in the organization to support our mission to educate and inspire others.

Congratulations!

The opportunity to meet new, like-minded lifetime friends is a great benefit of the Master Gardener Program. The graduation dinner event of  the 2024 Master Gardener class on November 9^th was well attended by such friends. (I want to shout out a big thank you for all the work that went into putting on this event: preparing all the food, providing the beverages and desserts, decorating the room, and putting together a wonderful program for this year’s graduates.)

I was happy to attend and celebrate the 2024 graduates, and was joined by several of my practicum sisters from my own graduating class of 2023 – John Kobal’s practicum group: Kathy Rogers, Kaleen Reilly and Nicole Smith, (not in attendance were Susan Hoehn and Joan Langley.)  One year later and we are still in regular communication with each other. I once read, “Friends are the flowers in the garden of life” and it is certainly true with our group. We really enjoy having lunch and dinner with one another and can often be found Wednesdays at Clyde’s Corner around the lunch hour. Beyond our love of food, we have fun meeting up to volunteer in the Native Plant Nursery and for special work events such as the Spring Garden Fair and Fall Festival. As honorary aunties, we have enjoyed watching the growth and development of JCMGA member in the making, sweet baby Jane Smith.  I’m looking forward to growing more together in 2025.

In the pictures are Kaleen Reilly, John Kobal, Dee Copley (one of the instructors with John), Virginia Clark, Nicole and Jane Smith, and Kathy Rogers.

I first submitted this tribute to Peggy Corum for publication in the Garden Beet in May of 2020.  Peggy passed away this past spring, 2024.

“I was born (89 years ago) of farming Nebraskans in a small town, at a wide place in the road, in a corner of Missouri.” Flags were always waving on Peggy Corum’s birthday, and it was years before she knew that the date – Nov. 11 – was Armistice Day (later Veteran’s Day).

“Everyone in my family was plant orientated,” she declares. “I pestered the little old lady next door, so she gave 4-year-old-me butterbean seeds. I planted them and that’s how I probably helped feed my family during the Depression.”

When she was 7, Peggy’s mom told her dad, “In Oregon, the cherries are so big, they look like plums!” and they moved west.  Our Master Gardener propagator to be grew up in Portland, attended a secretarial high school, and laughs when she remembers retiring three times – as office secretary for Medford’s Construction and Laborers Union, from her husband’s claims adjustment office, and as a propagator at Rogue Valley Roses. She lived for a few years with her husband in Germany and visited China to see rhododendrons.

Peggy learned propagation while she lived in Washington State from an expert rhododendron mentor who believed, “Anyone willing to put in work should have a connection to the best (plant material) there is,” and taught plant genetics and DNA long before those subjects were common knowledge. She learned about greenhouses and the less costly propagation tents later used in Peggy’s Propagation Garden. She became a Master Gardener in 1989, and soon was sharing what she had learned from the Pacific Rhododendron Society in a new Extension-based Grandma’s and Grandpa’s Garden.

Peggy always enjoyed visiting with friends while propagating and gardening.  She worked on the Garden Beet. Over the years, Peggy taught propagation to new Master Gardener classes, spoke at the Spring Garden Fair, held classes at Winter Dreams/Summer Gardens, gave community education class talks and was on the Master Gardener Speaker Bureau roster. “I’ve always worked in the elements.”

“Gardening is my reason for getting up in the morning,” Peggy said. Her favorite flower changes with the season: “I love most all of the plant world – but not poison oak!” Peggy smiles and admits, “I have a love affair with seeds; I can’t keep my hands off them. It’s so interesting when they ‘hatch’.”  Peggy, who lived in Ruch, has 4 children, 7 grandchildren, and 13 great-grandkids. When she’s not out in the elements, she knits, crochets, reads, and, “I still love to bake – cakes, cookies and pies.” Peggy Corum, The mistress of Master Gardener Propagation.

Announcing the Annual Jackson County Master Gardener™ Association

 Photo Contest

The Jackson County Master Gardener™ Association Member Services Working Group (MSWG) announces its annual photo contest.

✦The 2025 JCMGA Photo Contest is open to all current Jackson County Master Gardener™ Association members.

✦Photos may be submitted from January 1^st  until February 1^st, 2025.  We can accept two (2) photos from each member, although there will be only one winning photo per person.

✦Photographs are limited to those taken in gardens of the Rogue Valley and the focus must be on a plant or flower, garden art, animals in the garden – no people (for privacy issues).

✦Please submit your photograph in portrait format, rather than landscape format to jcmgaphoto1@gmail.com.

✦All photographs must be at least 1500 x 1575 pixels (5”x5-1/2” at 300 dpi) and all submitted photos become the property of JCMGA.

In addition, since the photograph on the cover of the directory is longer from top-to-bottom than from side-to-side, photos submitted must be in portrait format rather than landscape.

Please submit your picture to jcmgaphoto1@gmail.com and include your name, phone number, email address and a short description of the flora pictured. If you have any questions, please contact Sandy Hansen, sandyhansen08@gmail.com.    All identifying information will be removed and the contest will be judged by members of the Member Services Working Group and the editor of the Garden Beet.

The winning photograph will appear on the cover of the 2025 JCMGA Chapter Directory, and four runners-up will have their photographs featured in the Garden Beet. Winners will be announced in the April Garden Beet. Four runners-up will have their photographs featured in the Garden Beet. Winners will be announced in the April Garden Beet.

Whether your garden consists of several acres or a single plant in a hanging basket, we would love the opportunity to honor the beauty you have created and nurtured.

• All submitted photos become the property of JCMGA.