President’s letter – May 2025

Spring is here and I’m enjoying the warmer temperatures and flowers blooming. I’ve planted my cool season vegetable crops, and can’t wait to get the tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers in the ground.

Our Demonstration Garden MGs have begun their spring clean-ups and planting. There are many MGs and MG interns that have signed up for plant clinics and community events. Our garden educators and Garden Discovery Day MGs are getting ready to teach gardening classes to children at the Derwood Demo Garden. Our Speakers Bureau has been busy with presentations at garden clubs and libraries.

I truly appreciate everyone's commitment to MCMG's mission, and hope that you will volunteer for some of the upcoming activities. I look forward to seeing you soon!

Linda

Spring Plant Swap

 By MG Alex Friedman

The Spring Plant Swap will take place on Thursday, May 1 at noon at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds following the monthly MCMG meeting. Please bring healthy, pest-free plants, bulbs, and seedlings to swap. You may bring indoor and outdoor plants, as well as garden tools in working condition, pots, seeds, and other gardening paraphernalia.

We're making a special effort to NOT swap plants listed on the Maryland invasive lists. For example, this means NO Hemerocallis fulva (common orange daylily and tiger lily). Websites of the Maryland Department of Agriculture and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources provide more information about Maryland invasive plants.

Basic Rules

Fall 2024 Plant Swap
Photo: MG Len Friedman 

1. After you dig up and pot your plant(s), label each pot with:

a. Both the scientific and common names of the plant;

b. The light requirement of the plant (sun or shade);

c. Whether it is an outdoor plant or houseplant; and

d. Other useful information, such as the color of flowers.

You may add your name and contact information if you are willing to answer questions about the plant from the new owner.

2. Bring the items to the front entrance of the Old Timers' Building between 9:30 and 10 am, before the start of the monthly membership meeting. On the map of the Fairgrounds, Old Timers’ Building is labeled "2" on the upper edge of the map, near The Heritage.

3. When you drop off your item(s), you will get a ticket. Please look at your ticket! The last digit of the number is YOUR number.

4. There are three rounds of randomly selected numbers from zero to nine. When your number is called, you can select one new item. After the third round, the swap ends with a free-for-all round, during which everyone can choose from the remaining items.

5. You must take home anything that you brought to the plant swap that was not taken by someone else. We need to have the building totally clean of all garden items when the swap is over.

6. Please bring a box or bag with your name on it to hold the items you pick at the plant swap.

7. The plant swap will start at noon after the monthly membership meeting.

MCMG Events Calendar

 By MG Linda Barrett

What day does the Derwood Shade Garden team meet? Are there any Therapeutic Horticulture groups that meet on Thursdays? What is the deadline to submit articles to The Seed? You can find the answer to these and many other questions on our new MCMG calendar.

I’d like to thank MG Karen Donato for creating our new MG calendar, which is housed on Gardeners-Connected.groups.io. The calendar will be our one-stop location for everything happening in MCMG, including dates, times, detailed information, and points of contact for MCMG meetings and events. Committee chairs should contact Karen to place new events on the calendar.

To access the calendar, log into Gardeners-Connected.groups.io. If you are not already on Gardeners-Connected, please contact MG Carol Kosary to sign up (you can find her contact information on VMS). Once logged in, on the left side of the screen, select “Calendar,” as shown below.

You will notice that gardens are labeled in pink, plant clinics in green, MCMG meetings and deadlines in yellow, etc. I hope you find this calendar as useful as I do!

Introducing the MCMG Communications Style Guide

By MG Intern Imane Zouhar

The Communications branch of the Montgomery County Master Gardeners (MCMG) board oversees three committees responsible for The Seed newsletter, Social Events & Intern Hospitality, and Public Relations. With some of us stepping into our roles for the first time and others already well-established, we got together for coffee and a chat back in February to get to know one another. We discussed our positions and the general directions we’d like to take for the organization’s communications. One theme that came up was streamlining and standardizing MCMG’s communication channels, both internal and external.

As MGs, you’re no doubt familiar with the many and varied events we put together throughout the year. These are understandably preceded by numerous announcements, both on platforms available to us as MGs and those intended for the public. Alongside other non-event updates, this can sometimes feel confusing or overwhelming. A central goal of the current Communications team is to create a more systematic and digestible way of sharing and finding this information.

As a step toward that goal, MG Alison Edwards, editor of The Seed, has coordinated an effort to prepare a style guide for general MCMG communications. The guide is intended as an easy reference for MGs looking to share program-related information, helping us to create a more cohesive “look” for the organization’s public-facing announcements, social media posts, and presentations. To bring it together, MG Betsy Wooster has been hard at work distilling and adapting the existing style guide for The Seed, with input from members of the Communications team.

The result of two months of back-and-forth, we hope, is a set of concise and relevant guidelines that will become a go-to reference for many of you. It includes directions on event announcements, photo credits, MG terminology, and more. Please check out the MCMG Style Guide—we’d love to hear your thoughts! For future reference, you can also find the style guide on the MCMG website, under Policies and Guidelines for MCMG MGs.

May 2025 MG Recognition

By MG Linda Barrett

Communications Program

We would like to recognize our Communications program for sharing MG news through The Seed, publicizing our MCMG activities with Montgomery County residents, and keeping MGs personally connected through social events. 

MG Intern Imane Zouhar is the Communications program director. She held a wonderful meet-and-greet for committee members to get to know one another in January. She has supported the revamping of The Seed, and has begun a conversation about how to improve communication with county residents.

Pictured below from left to right: MG Alison Edwards took on the role of editor of The Seed this year. MGs Amy Henchey and Betsy Wooster alternate as copy editors, and MG Len Friedman is the photo editor. 

MG Donna Kolis (left) is the outgoing editor of the monthly Continuing Education listing posted on the MCMG website around the time of publication of The Seed, while MG Deborah Kleinberg (right) started that task this month.

Pictured below from left to right: MG LeeAnne Gelletly creates brochures, business cards, and garden signs for MCMG Public Relations (PR). Second Vice President MG Sue DeGraba wrote the 2024 MCMG Annual Report highlighting the value of our MG programs, while MG Intern Hilary Longo (PR) and MG Intern Krista McKim edited and designed the layout for the annual report.

MGs Carol Kosary and Linda Barrett (Social Events) plan the annual June picnic, December Holiday Party, and Intern Job Fair.

Special Recognition

We would like to acknowledge MG Karen Donato for creating the MCMG calendar on Gardeners-Connected.groups.io. This calendar will contain dates, times, detailed information, and points of contact for all MCMG meetings and events.

We also celebrate the Marion House Assisted Living Therapeutic Horticulture program; they received a letter of high praise from the Marion House Assisted Living Director. The group works with seniors to engage them in themed activities. Congratulations to MGs JoAnn Mueller, Pat Thomas, Gloria Mitchell, Mollie Moran, Peggy Fields, Holly Larisch, and Mary Couch, as well as former MG Kate Crawford.