CGBLLEd2020: Hi from Rockland!

Welcome and Introductory Discussion Forum

Hi from Rockland!

Hi, my name is Kristen and I am happy to be in this course with you all. I am the Horticulture Resource Educator and Master Gardener Volunteer Coordinator for Rockland County. I have been there a little over 2 years, since May 2018. Previously I was in Brooklyn for 16 years where I worked in several fields from art assisting, prop styling, studio production and art education. In 2010 after receiving my masters in Art Education I spent a summer in Maine working on an herb farm and it was there that I knew that there was no turning back from working with plants in some way or another. In pursuit of more knowledge and experience I studied Horticulture from Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and Permaculture from Brooklyn Permaculture Exchange. From there I went on to develop my own floral and small garden design business and became a plant buyer for several garden centers and stores. After many years in the city my partner and I were looking for opportunities outside of the city and when I saw the posting for the position at CCE I knew it would be a great way for me to merge my love of education and horticulture. I have enjoyed getting to work with the Master Gardeners. They are truly a wealth of knowledge and inspiration. We have about 55 active MGVs in Rockland.

Since the shut down in March several of our Master Gardeners have become very comfortable with delivering Speakers Bureau Presentations via Zoom and we have received great feedback on the programs. Several MGs and myself have delivered 32 gardening webinars and have several more lined up for the summer and fall. Twelve of the Master Gardeners started coming back to the demo gardens in late May and the VVTG is looking fantastic. 3 experienced MGs have continued to help with diagnostics and gardening questions remotely for the Hort Lab. One of our most active MGs is very interested in Invasive Species and is always encouraging other MGs to participate in LHPRISM related projects. I would like to pursue more climate/environment focused programs, as well as programs relating to food insecurity and access to freshly grown food. I am very grateful to be working with such an amazing group of Master Gardeners and hope to pick up some new ideas from this course that I can implement in our program.

Welcome Kristen!

You have a fabulous group of dedicated volunteers, many who have been with the program for years. There is a lot new in the way of Food Insecurity in the new MGV Learning lIbrary, and Ashley has even more to share on the effort.

As you know, I worked with Marcia Eames-Sheavley on the Youth Climate Change program (now officially called Gardening in our Warming World: Youth Grow!) to compliment the adult Gardening in a Warming World curriculum. The youth program should be published on the CGBL website this fall. Have you used the adult GWW program with the MGV's yet?

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Hi Kristen,

I love that your background brings together art and education in the garden - that's a big focus of the youth side of Cornell Garden-Based Learning, but I would love to see more of this in the adult programs throughout the state. This is a great time to also be incorporating more climate change and food security programming into the MGV work, as that's our focus statewide as well - that is a big focus of the new Food Forest Trial Garden program I will be developing with others at CCE over the next few years. If this is of interest to you, let's definitely chat about getting you involved! If you'd ever like to promote your webinars statewide to other MGV and MGV coordinators, I'm happy to share them in our newsletter as well - I usually check the CCE Admin website for updates on these programs (https://staff.cce.cornell.edu/units/cce-programming-during-covid-19-pandemic) or just let me know what you'd like me to promote.

Thanks for all of your great work - by the way, your volunteers were also amazing in this course last spring!

Ashley

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