Master Gardens
June 1st, 2010
Shirley Stark's Lemoyne front yard... one of the homes on the June 13 MG garden tour.
What’s a Master Gardener’s yard look like?
We’ll all get a chance to see on Sun., June 13, when eight Cumberland County Master Gardeners open their landscapes as part of the 2nd annual “At Home in the Garden” garden tour.
The way it works is you buy a tour booklet for $8, then make your way through as many of the gardens as you like. They’re all on the West Shore — Lemoyne, Camp Hill and Mechanicsburg.
They’re all different gardens, too… a perennial and native-plant garden; a cottage garden with no grass; a wildlife habitat; a four-season landscape; a farmhouse with a formal pool and veggie garden; a shady “faerie garden,” and a “wet and wild” garden with a pond, tropicals and a topiary rabbit.
Also on the tour are three other gardens that Cumberland’s MGs helped create: the new rain gardens along Lemoyne’s Market Street, the Trails and Trees nature center at Mechanicsburg Middle School and the Williamsburg-style garden at Upper Allen Elementary School.
If borrowing ideas from Master Gardeners isn’t enough of a lure, stop by Dippin Dairy at 324 Market St., Lemoyne, to get a free soft-serve ice-cream cone. Your ticket qualifies you for one of those on tour day.
And the ticket will get you a free quart-sized perennial and shopping discount at Highland Gardens, 423 S. 18th St., Lower Allen Twp.
The tour starts at noon on the 13th and ends at 6 p.m. Get your tickets in advance because the price goes up to $10 on the day of.
Advance sales are through Cumberland County Extension (call 240-6500 to charge or stop by at 310 Allen St., Carlisle) or at Bedford Street Antiques in Carlisle, Mountz Jewelers in Camp Hill, the Rosemary House in Mechanicsburg, or at Dippin Dairy or Highland Gardens.
On the 13th, ticket sales will be only at Dippin Dairy, Highland Gardens or Trails and Trees Center, 1731 S. York St., Mechanicsburg.
An online brochure with more details is at http://cumberland.extension.psu.edu/horticulture/gardentour2010brochure.pdf.
Master Gardeners are avid, veteran gardeners who volunteer their time helping the gardening public in exchange for training they receive from Penn State Extension. They do things like man phone lines, give seminars, help with public plantings and in Cumberland’s case, offer weekly plant-diagnostic clinics at the Fredricksen Library in Camp Hill and maintain the informative demo gardens at the county’s Claremont Nursing and Rehab Center.
Joan Kolka's iris-edged water garden... also on the tour.
They’re a great resource, and most of them have very nice home gardens. I’ve seen and written about several of them over the years.
Master Gardeners might know what they’re doing, but I can tell you they deal with the same “challenges” we all do.
You know what the main difference is between Master Gardeners and ordinary home gardeners?
Master Gardeners can tell you the correct name of the disease that killed their dogwoods and know the difference between whether it was a rabbit or a groundhog that devoured their bean patch.