Nelson County Master Gardeners

The Master Gardener program, conducted throughout the United States and Canada, is a two-part educational effort. Interested gardeners receive many hours of horticulture training. In exchange they volunteer their time to their local university extension agents.

Master Gardeners assist with garden lectures, exhibits, demonstrations, school and community gardening, phone diagnostic service, research, and many other projects.

Trained to Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE) standards in environmental horticulture, Nelson County’s Master Gardener volunteers have operated a Horticultural Help Line since 2002. They answer questions relating to gardening matters and help solve problems with soils, pests and plant diseases.

The early effort, spearheaded by longtime Master Gardener Bunyan Fortune, was staffed two afternoons a week and also featured a traveling Help Desk operating twice a month at the Nellysford Farmers’ Market.

Today’s vastly expanded program, which handles several hundred questions during a typical growing season, is coordinated by Mike Tabony and headquartered at the VCE office at the Nelson Center in Lovingston.

Master Gardener volunteers are available primarily on Mondays following the Nellyfords Farmer's Markets for telephone consultations, but staff members are always happy to take messages at any time and pass them on to the Master Gardeners. The Farmers’ Market "Roadshow" version of the Help Desk operates at Nellysford every Saturday from 8:00 a.m. to noon from May through September.

Callers or visitors to either Help Desk site should be prepared with information about their ailing plant, its name, location, lighting conditions, water conditions, and general appearance. It’s also very helpful for the Master Gardeners to see a specimen from the plant, including both a healthy and a diseased section.

If the Master Gardeners or the Extension Agent cannot identify the plant’s problem, they will send a specimen to Virginia Tech for further analysis and will report back to the gardener. The Master Gardeners are currently compiling a new library of laminated samples of leaves brought in for analysis which illustrate various plant diseases and their progression.