Community Services
Serving and Educating the Community
The objective of the Master Gardener program is to serve the public, providing information on gardening and assisting and supporting the Texas Cooperative Extension in Tyler and Smith County. The program was started in 1994 and today offers a wide variety of projects that disseminates research-based horticultural information that support our community in important ways.
Programs we offer:
From Bulbs to Bloom
Seminars on gardening are often available in the Spring, but in 1997 few addressed gardening during the Fall. The Smith County Master Gardeners wanted to fill this void by getting outstanding speakers, to make presentations relevant to the season which would encourage gardeners to take advantage of this opportunity for planting. Furthermore, they wanted to present this program at no cost to the participants. The Bulbs to Blooms event continues to be presented each fall with several hundred regularly in attendance. Check our Events listing to find the next schedule for the event.
The Home Garden Tour
Who doesn’t want to peek in other’s backyards to see what they’ve done that you might want to copy?? We all do and the annual Home Garden Tour project lets us do exactly that as we go around asking local homeowners if they want to show off their gardens during our HGT.
The purpose of this project is solely education in demonstrating and teaching the public what they might want to try in their own home gardens. Also, add in that we have Master Gardeners stationed at an information table in each garden with the benefit of answering gardening questions, demos, and handing out printed materials.
Calendar Journal and Planning Guide
This project began in 1997, organizing to create a gardening calendar for 1998 as a means of raising money to support the activities of the Smith County Master Gardeners and to provide educational gardening information to the purchaser. From the beginning this was a successful venture and beginning with the 1999 calendar, a colored painting was reproduced for the cover. The painting, a watercolor, was done by a Master Gardener and for the next few years a new painting was produced for the covers.
As the Guide was developed, more and more gardening information was included and each year that information is revised and updated, for the benefit of the gardening community. The colored covers have been changed to a photo taken in the community and chosen by the committee.
