Cornell Cooperative Extension Community Horticulture

The Master Gardener Volunteer Program is featured as a regional spotlight on Cornell’s land grant page. Scroll down to see it on the right column at this link

Richard Louv , author of Last Child in the Woods, Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, is speaking as a part of the Cornell Plantations lecture series on September 24th.

The lecture is “sold” out. 715 tickets have been distributed; we will open lecture doors at 6:30 and give #’s to individuals that come without tickets.  At 7:30 we will let people in if there are any open seats.

The lecture will be broadcast live through a webcast, www.plantations.cornell.edu/Louvwebcast For a free recording call 607.255.2400 or visit the Plantations Garden Giftshop about week after event for an audio copy.

This workshop is being held in Binghamton NY as a stand alone pre-conference workshop for the Association of Volunteer Resources Management organization.

If might be the  perfect 4hr ($45) professional development opportunity to help you advance the management of your program. It is on September 30 from 1pm to 5 pm and is being presented by a Cooperative Extension faculty from N.C.  who teaches numerous courses in volunteer management.

Workshop description:
It doesn’t take long for new administrators of volunteer programs to realize that to succeed at managing volunteers requires managers to wear a multitude of hats. Some days you’re the captain of the ship, then you’re asked to perform magic in your wizard’s hat, just before you pull on your garden hat to help grow new volunteers. Confusing,
overwhelming, rewarding, wonderful – mix all of this together and you have the reality of volunteer management. This session will feature a basic system for managing volunteer programs while focusing upon information and resources to help those new in the profession of volunteer resource management to adjust while finding the right fit for all their new hats!
By the end of the session, participants will be able to:
1) assess organizational needs to identify potential volunteer roles;
2) prepare consistent, accurate position descriptions for volunteers;
3) develop action plans to strengthen orientation and training programs for volunteers;
4) describe a system for overall volunteer program management; and
5) design formal and informal volunteer recognition strategies.

More details about register are at: http://avrm.org/

If you are interested or plan to goto this workshop or any portion of this conference Lori (bushway@cornell.edu) would like to hear from you.

October  22, 2008
8:30 am – 5:00pm

To be held at:
Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies
Millbrook, NY

Participants will learn techniques and methods for reintroducing native plants to areas that have been managed for the control of invasive plants and will also learn how to preserve existing native plant habitats.
Who should attend:
Land managers including local, state and national parks, land stewards, land trusts and preserves, large land owners such as corporations, religious institutions, historic mansions, colleges and residential schools, DEC foresters, landscape architects, horticulturists, growers, nurseries, soil and water conservation district employees, highway workers, NYS Turf and Landscape , EMC, CAC, and Master Gardeners.

Landscape Architecture CEU credits are pending approval.

Presented in cooperation with:  NYS DEC Estuary Training Program of the Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserve, the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Lower Hudson, Capital-Mohawk, and CRISP PRISMs, The Nature Conservancy, NYC Department of Environmental Protection, Teatown Lake Reservation, NYS Office of Parks Recreation Historic Preservation, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Dutchess County, NYS DEC Hudson River Estuary Program and New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission

Please share this information with all lists.

For more information contact:
Meredith Taylor
845-889-4745 ext. 109
mjtaylor@gw.dec.state.ny.us
or
Emilie Hauser 845-889-4745 ext. 112
eehauser@gw.dec.state.ny.us

Registration and Agenda (pdf).

These Urban Horticulture MHS Assistantships in the Department of Horticultural Science at NC State include tuition, a stipend and a paid internship at Roanoke Island, NC at the Elizabethan Garden.

They are on going positions that will become available in January and refilled as students graduate.

Contact:

Lucy Bradley, Ph.D. Extension Specialist

Urban Horticulture North Carolina StateUniversity

Department of Horticultural Science

Lucy_Bradley@ncsu.edu

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~lkbradle/

Community Gardening

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/garden/CommunityGarden/

MHS Assistantship Available

http://www4.ncsu.edu/~lkbradle/assistantship.html

IPM has developed a “travelers’ card” for people to print and carry with them titled “Bed Bugs – what you need to know:”

Click here (PDF)

Also available is a document for CCE staff on how to talk to callers about bed bugs: Click here (PDF)

Karl J. Niklas the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Plant Biology at Cornell University writes:

I wrote and produced a 10 minute long film about the importance of plants, the people who study them, and the history of plant biology societies.  The purpose of the film is to encourage people to study plants.  The film is on You Tube.

At this direct link

We can easily provide DVD copies to educators if they are interested.  Alternatively, they can use the You Tube link to go to the film directly.

As far as other resources go, the Botanical Society of America has set up a plant science tutorial network which allows educators and learners to work with professional plant biologists using the web.
The program is called PlantingScience.

Please let me know if I can provide any additional information or answer any questions.

Sincerely yours,

Karl J. Niklas

The Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Plant Biology
Department of Plant Biology
Cornell University
Ithaca NY 14853 (USA)
Phone:  607 – 255 – 8727
Fax:    607 – 255 – 5407

kjn2@cornell.edu

From Marcia Eames-Sheavly:

We have some exciting new project “supports” for you.  Knowing that some of you will be giving workshops for your volunteers, teachers, and other educators, I have put together a garden-based learning presentation that you can use in your counties.  It has been piloted in several settings; it will come with a one-page guide for its use, and a handout to accompany it.  Please let me know if you’d like a copy!  Please also let me know if you would like assistance with a garden-based learning workshop in your region.

As you’re aware, we’re pretty excited about our new living sculpture project, http://www.hort.cornell.edu/livingsculpture Two talented project assistants have been hard at work on the living sculpture project this summer, including creating a living sculpture “toolkit” to inspire an interest and direct people toward the website.  It contains a couple of informational/inspirational posters; a poster that instructs, in images, how to make the ever popular “sod sofa;” seeds, and other materials.  It’s at the printer currently, and we’ll be sending a kit to every county.  If you’re gearing up to do more with living sculpture, let us know if you’ll need more than one kit.

Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Center of North America regularly sends me a press feature packet. Which contains images as well as seasonally appropriate stories.

 Click here to see the package

Iis useful to county educators?

I’ll only pass it along if some portion say yes it is useful.

Thanks.

Lori

Deadline: October 31, 2008
Project Learning Tree® (PLT) awarded 24 GreenWorks! grants to schools and organizations across the country to involve students in community-based environmental projects. GreenWorks! is PLT’s service-learning program that engages PLT educators and their students with their local community in “learning-by-doing” neighborhood improvement projects. Since 1992, PLT has distributed over $565,000 to fund 810 grant projects in communities across the country. Proposals for the Fall 2008 cycle of grants are due on October 31, 2008. Grants up to $5,000 are available.

http://eelink.net/cgi-bin/ee-link/newclick/8913560