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National Earth-Kind® Specialist Training
Texas AgriLife Extension Service in Johnson County and Johnson County Master Gardeners are offering this year’s National Earth-Kind® Specialist training course. The course is open to 80 applicants on a first come first serve basis, limited to 2 Master Gardeners per county.
The National Earth-Kind® Specialist training course is designed to provide advance training and resources to Master Gardeners to certify them to be part of a state and national corps of Earth-Kind® experts and educators.
When: October 26-28, 2011
Location: Cleburne Conference Center, 1501 West Henderson, Cleburne, Texas 76033
Registration: $175.00
Deadline: October 1, 2011 (no refunds after October 14, 2011)
Contact: Zach Davis, CEA-AG/NR, ztdavis@ag.tamu.edu or (817) 556-6370
For more information and to register, please go to Resources/Specialist Training.
Who are Texas Master Gardeners?
Texas Master Gardeners is a volunteer program designed to grow horticultural information throughout the state, town by town. To become a Texas Master Gardener, a participant attends 50 hours of instruction, conducted by the local Extension county agent, then shares this knowledge by donating 50 hours of volunteer service back to the community.
The touch of Texas Master Gardeners’ green thumbs can be found across the state -- in school garden projects, horticultural therapy projects, community gardens and demonstration gardens; by volunteers who also conduct gardening programs and answer gardening questions. Anything anyone wants to know about gardening, a Master Gardener can help. That includes young wannabe gardeners too – Master Gardeners help set up 4-H gardening clubs and Junior Master Gardener groups.
In fact, when it comes to green and growing things, Master Gardeners dig into their service in all kinds of ways: teaching, giving presentations, writing newsletters and articles, providing clerical help, and designing and maintaining Web pages.
Want to Know More?
In 2008, more than 6,400 volunteers were Texas Master Gardeners, according to the organization’s annual report.
That year Texas Master Gardeners gave 2,200 presentations for a combined audience of 68,087 of their neighbors, and provided research-based horticulture information to 18,000 others.
Volunteers contributed 454,036 hours to horticulture-based educational projects in 2008, a benefit to the state that was worth $9 million.
