To the editor:

The purpose of this letter is to communicate to you about the excellence and value of our Brown County Master Gardener's Program and the connection we have with our County Extension Agent.

The Master Gardener's program in Brown County is alive and thriving. All 34 of us have had 48 hours of University of Minnesota training on botany, entomology, plant pathology, soils, herbaceous plants, vegetables, fruits, trees, lawns, etc. The training was formulated and organized by the University of Minnesota Extension. Graduates of the program are expected to be fingers of this service, and they are expected to volunteer hours of advanced study and hours of community service each year. These hours are reported to the state office and approved. Most Master Gardeners have more hours than required. Several of our members have each donated well over 1000 hours to our county.

Our Brown County Master Gardeners organized in 1996 with 11 members. Since then we have grown to 34 very active members. Our outreach to the community has been remarkable. In our history we have served through education through personal contact with citizens, but also through the Brown County Fair, FarmFest, Lamberton Field Day, Farm City Days, and our locally written Weeder's Digest publications since 1996. We have initiated or joined presentations in 4-H, Girl Scouts, Kinderfest, ProKids workshops, Walmart planting advice, Butterfly presentations, Herberger's Kids Day, plus writing newspaper articles for all county newspapers, including the Sleepy Eye Herald, The Journal of New Ulm, the New Ulm Shopper, Springfield Advance Press, Morgan Messenger, Hanska Herald and Comfrey Times. We also make seasonal presentations at county grade schools on pumpkins and apples, accompanied by a coloring booklet we furnish.

Being avid gardeners, we have assisted in some gardening at German Park, the Lind House, Gilfillan Estates, Randall's Boulevard, the New Ulm Group Home, Putting Green, and the Riverhaven Secure Unit at St. John Lutheran Home of Springfield, for which our group received the state Search for Excellence Award and the Tri-State Project of Merit Award. Our main vision of the program, however, is education.

We have made donations, sponsored by donations we have received and by a plant sale. We donate the coloring books to the grade schools throughout the county, plus on Arbor Day we plant a tree somewhere in the county public grounds: Brown County Fair Grounds, Wellman-Hageman County Park, and Brown Park in Springfield.

This is a bird's eye view of our activities. Our big yearly fete is the horticulture exhibits at the Brown County Fair, where we organize the exhibit list and rules in the fair booklet, make presentations on how to exhibit at the fair, set up the exhibit space, assist as the exhibits come, and assist the judges we pick and review our expectations with as they work their way through the extensive displays. We have people who watch the exhibits as the fair progresses and answer questions as onlookers proceed through the exhibits, and then we supervise and remove all horticulture exhibit materials at the end.

All 34 of us Master Gardeners are very excited to have this opportunity to learn more and help with community education. We are grateful to the Extension for their enthusiastic assistance and yes-attitude in our ventures. We are amazed at the knowledge of our local extension agent, Wayne Schoper. He seems to know about every venue we pursue and is full of ideas to give us options to accomplish what we decide. We all treasure his "can-do" attitude. He can see beyond where we are and suggest the Extension could provide this or locate that or make that connection for us, which has been a huge help throughout the years. He can help us see how we can make projects touch more citizens than we thought would be our goal. We find his extensive plus international background to be very valuable to our program, and, in fact, to our county.

The thoughts and opinions of our group come from throughout the county, from Comfrey, Springfield, Sleepy Eye, Morgan, and from the New Ulm area. Although our backgrounds differ from rural to city, from smaller town to New Ulm, we share our commitment to education and our sincere need to keep Wayne Schoper as County Extension Agent attached to our program. We Master Gardeners need to have a resource person like Mr. Schoper in our area for us to continue our mission statement to further horticultural education in Brown County.

Marianne Schotzko

Founding Member

Ingrid Liedman

Secretary

Brown County

Master Gardeners