Our new billboard promoting the Everything Garden Expo is scheduled to go up today on Highway 12.

In the meantime, let me tell you what you can expect. More than 50 vendors showing and selling everything you need to become a master gardener.  The educational seminars are just what the doctor ordered to deliver you from the dark days of winter.  Yawl come!

Saturday, March 5, 2011

8:45 – 9:45

“Landscaping 101”

Brian Templeton, an extension associate of the Mississippi State University Landscape Architecture Department, will lead off the educational seminars with an overview of landscaping and the huge role it plays in the home environment. Templeton, a jack-of-all trades and Master of Landscape Architecture, will share practical tips on how to get started. Or maybe you want to start over completely and move in a new direction. Don’t miss this comprehensive examination of the various components of landscape architecture and how all the pieces fit together.

10:00 – 11:00

“Dang it: Varmints Again!”

Donna Beliech addresses the world of garden marauders. Moles, voles, and squirrels wreck beautiful flowerbeds. Armadillos are just plain messy. They root around, snout to the ground, digging craters in the yard during the twilight hours. Squirrels are very busy burying nuts for the winter but also uproot freshly planted flowers in decorative containers. Let’s not forget about the biggest landscape plant eater in the south: DEER. They

develop a habit of visiting your yard nightly to nibble on roses, Indian Hawthorne, daylilies and pansies. Come and learn how to deter animal invasions in an important program led by Ms. Beliech, MSU-Extension Service Area Horticulture Agent.

11:15 – 12:00

“How to Grow Award- Winning Daffodils”

These harbingers of spring are high on everyone’s list. No one does them better than Dr. Jack Hollister, a medical doctor in Starkville who cares for patients by day and tends his acres of daffodils after hours.

12:15 – 1 LUNCH (Concessions available on site.)

1:00 – 2:00 p.m.
“Beautify with Native Plants”

Noted for her light-hearted and entertaining delivery, Kristin Lamberson is the Interpretive Gardens Specialist at Strawberry Plains Audubon Center in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She will share her vision for a new cultivated landscape, one that is more attuned and aligned with the natural world. With her focus on native plants, she will show unique relationships between some of those plants and a world that few of us take time to see. Kristin will encourage us to view our landscapes from a different perspective, most often through the eyes of those entities that lack a human voice. She says, “We can make a sweeping, positive change for the natural world by simply creating a landscape that supports life rather than diminishes it. We also, then empower and enrich our own lives by having sanctuary just outside our doors.”

2:15 – 3:15

“Latest Tips from the World of Herbs”

Dr. Lelia Kelly is an Associate Extension Professor and the Consumer Horticulture Specialist for the Mississippi State University Extension Service. Her duties also include statewide responsibility for the Master Gardener Program. She has her M.S. and Ph.D. in horticulture from Mississippi State and has worked for Extension for eleven years. Before joining Extension she owned and operated two businesses, a landscape design and consulting business and a wholesale herb growing greenhouse operation. She is a regular contributor to Mississippi Gardener magazine and also contributes to newspapers and other gardening publications. She is a frequent speaker at garden events in the Southeast. She lives and gardens in rural North Mississippi, near Corinth.

3:30 – 4:15

“Cooking with Herbs”

Vicki Leach is Chef/Culinary Instructor for the Viking Cooking School and a full time faculty member for the Culinary Arts Institute at Mississippi University for Women. She will demonstrate how to incorporate more flavors into your meals with herbs. Ms. Leach began her culinary career as an intern, held the position of kitchen manager and now teaches for the love of all things culinary as she takes food preparation to a higher level.

4:30 – 5:30

“Dos and Don’ts of Container Gardening”

Dr. Jeff Wilson received his undergraduate and master’s degrees in horticulture from Auburn University, and his PhD in Agricultural Information Sciences from Mississippi State. He owned a landscape design, installation, and consulting company for more than 25 years, managed a retail garden for seven years and served as an extension agent for Northeast Mississippi for seven years. He will demonstrate how to garden successfully in containers.

SUNDAY, MARCH 6^th

12:00 -1:00

“How to Succeed as an Organic Gardener”

Program leader Will Reed became interested in preventable health problems while still a college student studying cultural anthropology. He moved from his native Tupelo to Northern California where he apprenticed at several organic farms. In 2010 he returned to north Mississippi to establish Native Son Farm on 30-acres adjacent to his childhood home. Native Son Farm is part of the “certified naturally grown” program which provides produce to farmer’s markets, home delivery, and restaurants in North Mississippi. He will discuss organic pest control, heirloom tomatoes, and tools of the trade to establish an organic garden.

1:15 – 2:30

“Gardening for the Entire Family”

John Guyton believes that the garden is too important just to grow vegetables in; we can raise children in the garden as well. Things your teacher did not tell you and your mother did not want you to know often show up in his presentations and he even encourages you to play with your food! He invites teachers to describe the most difficult topics they have to cover and then he suggests ways to do it outdoors. Life’s most important lessons can be learned in the garden: cooperation, weather forecasting, biology and all about the birds and bees, math, nutrition, how to recover from failure, music, art, etc. Guyton helped design the award winning Mississippi Master Gardeners program and has been recognized by the American Horticulture Society with their Great American Gardener Teaching Award. He is an Extension faculty member in the MSU Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture department and the director of intergenerational insect and plant ecology and wildlife fisheries and aquaculture summer camps.

2:45 -3:45

“Vegetable Gardening Wisdom”

The popular radio talk show host, Garden Mama Nellie Neal, will discuss smart ideas and techniques you can use right now to make the most of your vegetable garden. A lifelong gardener, Mrs. Neal writes a weekly newspaper garden column, maintains a colorful and informative website for gardeners and can answer just about any garden question thrown her way. She is the author of “Questions and Answers for Deep South Gardeners: and “Organic Gardening Down South.” She has become a breath of fresh air at this annual garden event.

INFORMATION BOOTHS AND EMERGENCY SERVICES – Booth # 35

Dr. Wayne Wells, Extension Research Professor -Turf grass

Dr. Alan Henn, Extension Professor – Plant Pathology

Dr. Blake Layton Jr. Extension Professor – Entomology

Dr. Keith Crouse, Associate Extension Professor – Soil Fertility

Dr Lelia Scott Kelly, Associate Extension Professor -Consumer Horticulture

Dr Victor Maddox, Geosystems Research Institute-Plant Identification and Invasive Plants

Ms. Julie Broussard White, Oktibbeha County Extension Director