Local gardeners in Broomfield and the surrounding area have been providing advice and expertise to the community for years.
Colorado State University’s extension campus in Broomfield is one of many CSU campuses with a master gardener program. The groups are full of dedicated gardeners who educate the community, solve problems, and provide garden-related services.
“Everything I grow dies and I wanted to know more about it and the program teaches you a lot,” said Master Gardener Mike McNulty. “Everything I grow still dies, but now I know why.”
McNulty has been participating in the program for 16 years and explains that once gardeners are accepted into the program, they are taught all aspects of the art of horticulture – from plant diseases to soil problems, each gardener is trained to solve a variety of specific problems of the local flora.
One of McNulty’s focuses is personal consultations, where residents can call the master gardeners and ask them questions about their gardening problems. He said his background in biology helps him stay curious about the problems Broomfielders call with, from typical lawn watering questions to bizarre puzzles.
“One had a spruce tree and had these damaged parts on the tree that looked like hail damage, but it was just one side of the tree and the bottom of the branches,” McNulty said. “It turns out the neighbors had two young boys who liked to play golf and they were hitting their golf balls into the spruce tree.”
Kristin Moore is another Master Gardener with a similar story: She joined the program after having “moderate success” in gardening and was looking for ways to get better.
“It’s very satisfying to see a tiny seedling suddenly grow into a 5-foot-tall plant that produces bountiful yields,” she said.
One part of the program Moore specializes in is gardening fundamentals, where she teaches the basics of Colorado gardening in the teaching garden outside of the Brunner Farmhouse.
“We can actually take people out into the garden and they can put into practice some of the things they talked about in class,” she said.
The program also offers special learning opportunities for children. Master Gardener Julie Herring has been involved since 2012 and teaches gardening to elementary school students.
“We work with the kids not only to learn about plants, but also to teach them the science behind them – we talk about soils and plant parts,” she said. “We try to teach them to be good stewards of the land, how we work together and how plants and people need each other to survive,” she said.
The program was a way for Herring to express her love of plants while helping people.
“I often hear, ‘I can’t grow anything, I’ll kill everything.’ … I always say gardening is really just an experiment, you have to do your best and see what happens,” she said.
For more information about the program, visit cmg.extension.colostate.edu.
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