Cornell Cooperative Extension Community Horticulture

Are you looking for ways to share the excitement of school gardening with other teachers and educators? Need to convince your administrators of the benefits of beginning a garden in your school? Although you’re familiar with all the merits, are you looking for research-based justification of why gardening is so important? Use this Powerpoint presentation (link) to get everyone on board! Designed as a guided presentation, or a stand alone that can run on its own, this will help you rally others and build enthusiasm. Available from the Cornell GBL resource page: http://www.hort.cornell.edu/gbl/pubs/index.html

You might also be interested in the Creating and Sustaining Your School Garden CSYSG training program created by the UC Davis Children’s Garden Program and UC Santa Cruz/Life Lab at:

http://www.csgn.org/page.php?id=75

Pre-tested living sculptures in several counties informed the web-based guide below. We are particularly pleased with the creativity and range of activities, and with the videos for inspiration. Now we need educators to help us fine tune! After pilot testing and receiving your feedback, we’ll officially release the site to the public in July ‘08:

http://www.hort.cornell.edu/livingsculpture

This word doc defines “pilot testing” and addresses how you can receive funds to do so.

Any questions? Ready to pilot test? Please contact Christine Hadekel for further guidance, and with your completed form: ch459@cornell.edu

Now is the perfect time to curl up with seed catalogs and pick vegetable varieties for summer gardens. To see how various varieties have worked out for thousands of other gardeners, check out Cornell’s Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners Web site.

The full article from the Cornell Chornicle Online is available here.

Also find other article in the Chronicle Online here.

Introduction to Botanical Illustration: Drawing Plant Forms in Pencil and Ink

A New Online Course Offered by Cornell University’s Department of Horticulture

Course begins on January 21, 2008.
Registration deadline:January 16, 2008

Enrollment limited to 20 students, so be sure to reserve your spot right away.

Cost: $500. (No discounts.)

Have you always wished that you could be more proficient at drawing?

Have you been looking for an opportunity to unwind by finding a new avenue to express yourself creatively?

Have you simply not enrolled in a drawing class because of a lack of opportunity or your busy schedule?

About the course
This six-week online course for beginners teaches you how to use plants as the subject of art with easy approaches and many visual examples. Because you take the course online, you can access it whenever you want and complete the lessons at your own pace. A physical distance from other students allows you to express yourself creatively without comparing your work to those around you, fostering confidence and your own individual style, while still providing an opportunity to interact with others online through a discussion forum.
Introduction to Botanical Illustration is designed for beginning artists of all ages and from all walks of life — from current students, to those who haven’t taken a class in a very long time. Topics include:

• How to observe and approach subjects for drawing.
• How to creatively transfer what you see to paper.
• How to use the elements of line, shape and space constructively to make a composition.

Participants will read very straightforward lessons on six different topics in botanical drawing and observing the natural world. You will advance your own skills through practice and assignments, and reflect critically on your experiences in journal entries shared with your instructor and with other students via an online forum.

The six lessons of the course will begin on January 21, 2008, and the course will end on March 12, 2008. The deadline for submission of all assignments will be on the Friday of each week.

To get the most out of the experience, you should expect to spend 3 - 5 hours per week on the lessons and assignments. The course is offered through Moodle, an easy-to-use online interface that you’ll view through your personal computer’s web browser, or print out to use elsewhere. No additional software is required, but you will need a scanner to submit your assignments.

To register, please follow the link http://hosts.cce.cornell.edu/hortdl and click on Introduction to Botanical Illustration.

Course syllabus

The 2008 Selected list of Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners in NYS is now available in pdf form via the Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners’ info page or directly here.

We are eager to recruit lots more vegetable gardening enthusiasts to submit their opinions at the Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners project website about the vegetable varieties they have grown.

As it stands now we have 2,230 registered vegetable gardeners, over 600 from NYS. We representation from 60 of our 62 counties (we need Lewis and Richmond counties). Collectively NYS gardeners have submitted 871 of the more than 3,300 total vegetable varieties reviews we have collected.

We do hope someday soon to generate our recommended varieties list from gardeners’ opinions shared on this site so please help us build some depth across NYS by spreading the word in your county. Check out the promotional material you can download from the Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners project website. There is a PowerPoint presentation about the project, bookmarks and posters as well as a link to the new Vvi project aiming to partner youth and adult gardeners.

On November 29^th our Community Horticulture Garden-Based Learning team meet on campus.

Here are the minutes (pdf)

You asked for it, and you’ve got it.

Recently, a number of CCE educators have requested an easy, introductory garden-based learning activity for children — something that could be done in any program setting, at any time of the year, with few materials, with little preparation, that we would promote widely among counties, that could be a good NYS Fair entry, and that could be a stepping stone for other projects.

We have worked with Leigh MacDonald, education director for the Ithaca Children’s Garden, to develop this activity, attached. It has been a successful and often requested introductory activity with her program, and seemed fitting as a statewide project. We tried it out at a recent garden-based learning meeting, and the numerous educators there made some suggestions and additions. While it’s exciting to develop innovative, and perhaps more advanced projects, we don’t want to neglect the newcomer to garden-based learning arena.

Soon, we will be sending along information about a new living sculpture project, which focuses on youth-adult partnerships in the context of public art, with both introductory, and more challenging community-based activities. This could be a springboard for that new effort as well. Please stay tuned.

Many thanks to Leigh for putting this together for us, and to those educators providing us with valuable input. We welcome feedback as to how you may be adapting it for your setting.

turtle-sprouts-2008.pdf

Best,
Marcia

Marcia Eames-Sheavly, Senior Extension Associate
Cornell Garden-Based Learning Program
Department of Horticulture, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
http://www.hort.cornell.edu/gbl
http://www.hort.cornell.edu/art

Check out it out at: http://hort.cals.cornell.edu/

Note the directory under shortcuts has updated faculty pages. This could prove useful in your searches for experts to help with your questions or program needs.

Also look at In the News for items you might want to pass along to your volunteers or through your local newsletters.

As winter approaches it’s a perfect opportunity to revisit the splendor of your garden through the development of educational workshops around your favorite garden topic.

Let this cheat sheet from Cornell’s Department of Horticulture communication specialist Craig Crammer help you get started with your presentations.

cheatsheet.pdf

Here’s the “save the date!” flier for an informative one-day event devoted to early childhood and the garden. This will be a Cornell and SUNY Cobleskill partnership, which I’m particularly excited about! Please forward, and/or print and share with potential participants. Stay tuned!

Marcia Eames-Sheavly, Senior Extension Associate
Cornell Garden-Based Learning Program
http://www.hort.cornell.edu/gbl

Flier (word doc)