Cornell Cooperative Extension Community Horticulture

Are you interested in engaging students in your area in community service projects related to gardening?

Check out these Service-Learning Guides at Service Learn.

The purpose of the Guides are to:

o Make it easy for the instructor to establish and implement a Service-Learning program

o Make Service-Learning a meaningful, educational, and character-building experience for students

o Provide students with the opportunity to document and evaluate the success of their Service-Learning projects

o Help students work together to make real and sustainable changes in their communities, the nation, and the world

o Help students combine academic learning with service to their communities

They provide a definition of Service-Learning, presents the history of the concept, and describes key components of a Service-Learning project. Other topics include:

o Creating a Better Future
o How to Develop a Service-Learning Project
o Commitment to the Service-Learning Project
o Researching the Problem
o Solving Problems at Their Source
o Plan of Action
o Examples of Service-Learning Projects
o Interdisciplinary Service-Learning

Keep an eye out for a mail tube coming to your county. It contains a couple of beautiful gardening-oriented posters. One about the our Vegetable varieties for gardeners project and another about youth Garden-based learning efforts.

Vegetable poster (PDF)

GBL poster (pdf).

We saved on time and cost by combining our shipment into one mailing tube per county. It will arrive next week addressed to the community horticulture contact in your county. We hope you will share the posters with others interested in your county including 4-H youth development.

If you are interested in a poster version of the gardening benefits flier (pdf) which is also in the tube let me know (ljb7).

Hope these are useful for your office, county fairs, and other community displays!

Lori

Improving the quality of out-of-school time activities and creating effective learning environments is of keen interest to practitioners, funders and policymakers. Funded by The William Penn Foundation, Quality Time After School identifies characteristics of after-school activities that are linked to youth engagement and learning across a rich diversity of out-of-school-time activity areas.

Drawing from surveys and interviews with more than 400 participants and instructors from five Philadelphia-based Beacon Centers, the report’s findings highlight the importance of two features of high-quality activities: good group management and positive adult support of learning. Building on analyses of over 50 detailed activity observations, as well as key lessons from past research, the report also suggests a road map for program operators and policymakers to create engaging learning environments in after-school programs.

To read the executive summary, please click here .

Brooklyn Botanic Garden Releases First All-Region Guide For Kids and Families

Gardening With Children

Available June 2007

Brooklyn, NY–May 25, 2007–Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) announces the release of the newest All-Region Guide, Gardening With Children, BBG’s first handbook for children and their caregivers–entirely devoted to activities and projects that connect kids with the natural world through gardening. Families will find a colorful, compact resource that teaches basic concepts in horticulture and ecology in ways that are ceaselessly fascinating and fun.

Gardening With Children offers valuable lessons about raising plants. This groundbreaking guide encourages children to discover nature’s cycles and follow their innate curiosity as they explore garden-related activities and learn how to grow plants from seed. Gardening With Children was developed and written by members of BBG’s expert education staff and explores basic ecological concepts with thought-provoking, hands-on activities for every season. The creative projects in the book are geared for 6- to 10-year-old children who garden or explore along with an adult caregiver; older children will be able to enjoy the book independently.

Scores of fun projects will awaken a child’s sense of wonder about the natural world while nourishing cognitive functioning and self-confidence. Whether readers have access to a large green yard or a simple windowsill planter, Gardening With Children invites adults and children to share the joy of watching plants, and the animals that live among them, grow and flourish.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden established the country’s first children’s garden in a botanic garden and today is known worldwide for its children’s education programs.

According to Sharon Myrie, vice president of Education at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, “For nearly 95 years, BBG has earned a reputation for its groundbreaking, successful children’s gardening programs. Through our hands-on gardening programs, we are encouraging children to be active participants in the full cycle of nature, from planting seeds to harvesting their crops. As awareness of the fragility of our environment increases, it is important to teach our children to be good stewards of the land and to foster a true love of gardening. We are thrilled to extend our expertise to children and their families with the publication of this engaging, innovative and colorful book.”

Gardening With Children features:

• Over 40 hands-on activities and ideas for many more
• Wildlife and food gardening projects, nature explorations, science experiments, journal keeping, art and craft activities
• Easy step-by-step instructions
• Beautiful full-color illustrations on each page
• Comprehensive glossary and index

Information-packed and bursting with colorful illustrations, Gardening With Children allows kids and their families to delight in observing and interacting with plants and animals while discovering nature’s cycles and communities.

The New York Times Book Review called BBG’s handbook series a “brilliant collection of little gardening handbooks…Each one takes a small bite of subject matter and chews it thoroughly…the mix of common sense, practical advice and, on occasion, pointed debunking…makes these slender volumes do the work of books twice their size and three times their price. And what the handbooks…lack in acreage they make up for in authority.”

Ordering Information

Gardening With Children (ISBN-10: 1-889538-30-2) is available at a discount direct from Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s online store at shop.bbg.org, or by calling 718-623-7286. It is also available in bookstores and at garden centers for $9.95 in the U.S./$12.95 in Canada. For wholesale ordering information, call Sterling Publishing at 800-367-9692 or visit its website at www.sterlingpub.com . To receive a free brochure of current and past handbook titles, call 718-623-7241.

The Urban coyote bulletin offers ecology, management information about our ‘new neighbors.’

Native Americans called them “ghosts of the plains” because they were heard but rarely seen. But coyotes are becoming “ghosts of the cities,” recently moving to urban and suburban areas in growing numbers and raising unique management issues.

A new Ohio State University Extension bulletin, “Urban Coyote Ecology and Management,” addresses those issues and provides a better understanding of how these remarkable creatures “work” in their new habitats.

It is bulletin 929 from The Ohio State and copies cost $3.75 each from:
http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~buckpubs/natres.htm

Chemung, Ontario, Orleans, Rensselaer and Washington County Master Gardeners have been collaborating with Charlie Mazza for the last 15 months to launch a new educational theme, Site Assessment for Gardeners. Master Gardeners in those counties are conducting workshops in 2007 with home gardeners as a means of motivating home gardeners to plan ahead. There is still some work to do, but resources will be available to move beyond those five counties in Autumn, 2007, published by NRAES.

We have broken it up into chapters for ease of viewing online. It is based on a series of activities to gather information about a site. Note that it will undergo some changes, based on a peer review that is being conducted in many states in the Northeast and Central part of the U.S.

If you want to see a pre-publication version of the workbook, visit it online at www.gardening.cornell.edu/landscape and click on the first resource on that list, Site Assessment for Gardeners (4.8 MB, pdf file).

Here is what the back cover of the future workbook will say:

Ever wonder why some gardens and landscapes look dazzling year after year, while others just go down hill after planting?

Are you looking for ways to prevent gardening problems before they get out of hand?

Then site assessment – the ‘discovery process’ that reveals the physical traits that make your yard unique – can help your gardens and landscapes thrive.

The hands-on activities in this workbook will help you find out more about the soil, wind, light, temperature, drainage, and uninvited wildlife guests that determine the success or failure of your plantings.

When you’ve gotten to know your property better using this approach, you’ll have:
• A sketch of your yard with information you’ll need to make important planting decisions for years to come.
• A list of existing plants and how they fit into your future plans.
• A checklist of other physical factors that you have discovered during your site assessment.

Matching your plantings to your site’s characteristics will help you create more-sustainable and easier-to-care-for landscapes.
Each step includes an explanation of its importance, information-gathering activities, how to use the information you gather as well as books and websites for more information.

We also have a powerpoint presentation (in both CD format and 35mm slide format) arriving in the Horticulture Resource Library to motivate gardeners to the advantages of assessing their properties and a workbook that contains steps to accomplish the goal. I

This project on Site Assessment for Gardeners builds on the statewide Community Horticulture Extension educational goal of preventing gardening problems from getting out of hand by getting to know your site — its opportunities and challenges. The goal of promoting preventive practices in gardening/landscaping was set by the Community Hort PWT back in the early 2000’s. Both the powerpoint and the workbook are resources to help you further that educational goal and to you plan educational programs on that theme in years to come.

For additional information contact project leader: Charlie Mazza (cpm6@cornell.edu)

Free copies of this book are available from the Biodiversity Research Institute bri@mail.nysed.gov

http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/bri/publications/legacy.html

Legacy: Conserving New York State’s Biodiversity is a new, 100-page, full-color book offering a remarkable glimpse into the vast array of life and beauty in New York State. Included are the birds we see at our backyard feeders, giant salamanders that quietly eat crayfish, “bottomless�? lakes, alpine tundra, forests that need fire to survive, and much, much more.

This book is a publication of the New York State Biodiversity Project, an ambitious collaborative effort by the American Museum of Natural History, New York State Biodiversity Research Institute, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, New York Natural Heritage Program, and The Nature Conservancy. The group’s aim is to improve the understanding of the state’s biodiversity and to identify both challenges and solutions to protect it.

This web page on Cornell Gardening Resources web site can help you local some of our publications:

http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/pubs.html

Feb. 6, 2007

PULLMAN, Wash. — Gardeners of all skill levels have a new resource in the form of MasterGardener magazine and its companion Web site, www.MasterGardenerOnline.com. The first edition of the magazine has just been published.

The quarterly magazine and the Web site are a collaboration of the Washington State University Extension Master Gardeners Program and GFC Publishing. GFC is a division of the Washington State Fruit Commission, a state agency and publisher of Good Fruit Grower magazine. Good Fruit Grower long has been the bible of commercial tree fruit growers with subscribers in all 50 states and 41 countries.

“We’ve had 60 years of experience as education partners with WSU researchers and specialists in producing Good Fruit Grower,” said Master Gardener managing editor Jim Black. “MasterGardener will take the same responsible, science-based approach to bringing a better understanding of growing methods to the general public.”

The magazine will feature regular articles by WSU Extension faculty, Master Gardeners and others, including a “horticultural myths” column by extension horticulturist Linda Chalker-Scott that compares common gardening lore to scientific reality.

“The partnership of WSU Master Gardeners and Good Fruit Grower is a natural,” said Linda Kirk Fox, dean of WSU Extension. “It fits our mission in horticultural education and promoting a sustainable environment, and it fits with our goal to strengthen public-private partnerships.”

Fox said that she expects the magazine to become a “must keep” publication for subscribers.

“Knowing the quality of GFC publications, every issue will be well written with beautiful photographs to motivate all gardeners,” she said. “It will also be a critical educational tool and a great reference for the public, regardless of whether they’re casual or serious gardeners.”

The WSU Master Gardeners Program was born in 1971 in King and Pierce counties as a way for extension programs to meet growing urban demand for horticultural and landscape information. The Master Gardener concept of developing a trained network of volunteers willing to share their knowledge with the public has spread throughout the nation and to a number of other countries.

An annual subscription to the magazine is $20, and a three-year subscription is $50.

For more information, or to subscribe or advertise, call toll-free 1-800-487-9946, extension 208, or visit www.MasterGardenerOnline.com

Tree Fruit Field Guide to Insect, Mite and Disease Pests and Natural Enemies of Eastern North America is out from NRAES. See promo: tfpromohigh-res.pdf.

Purchase direct from NRAES at the Cornell rate of $19.20/copy plus $4.25 shipping and handling. They will retail for about $32.