Garden Notes

Shrub border that will be checked weekly by the "Bloom Team."

I recently finished my classes to become a Master Gardener and passed the final exam. My next step is to complete the volunteer portion of our training. Each student must volunteer at least 24 hours in the Master Gardener organization to become certified. There are many choices; hands-on gardening, helping with the spring plant sale, speaking at various functions about gardening, staffing the Master Gardener booth at various events or helping with office tasks. Even gardeners have paper work!

We are all connected to the main office through email and every week, we are sent “volunteer opportunities” to help us complete this portion of our training. Two weeks ago I signed on to become a member of the “Bloom Team” at Boerner Botanical Gardens and am now a proud member of the Shrub Mall East Bloom Team for the 2013 season.

Bloom Team Requirements:

• Members of the Bloom Team must make a commitment to visit the gardens every week from April through hard frost. Admission to Boerner is free when we are doing our Bloom Check.
• A mini team consisting of 2 or 3 people is assigned an area of the garden to monitor bloom times for each plant. At least 2 people are preferred so there is coverage of the area for those times when one person may unable to come. We can either do the observations at the same time, or split the beds between the two of us or whatever works!
• Other arrangements for subs to cover vacations can always be made.
• The Bloom Team members will be working as a team with the Horticulturist in charge of the assigned area.

Where does this Bloom information finally go? The bloom time information is recorded on an Excel spreadsheet and submitted monthly. At year-end, the information is compiled and added to a growing volume of data available on the Friends of Boerner Botanical Gardens website.