President's Letter - May 2026

MCMG President Linda Barrett

By MG Linda Barrett

Spring is here and I’m enjoying the warmer temperatures and flowers blooming. I’ve begun cleaning up my vegetable garden and can’t wait to get the tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers in the ground. My native plant gardens will have to wait another month or so for clean-up, while the insects continue to emerge from the leaf litter and soil.  

Over the winter, our Speakers Bureau was reorganizing, adding new schedulers and speakers. They seem to be very busy with presentations at garden clubs and libraries. Therapeutic Horticulture continues to work every month of the year, providing themed workshops of garden education and crafts for assisted living residents. 

The six demo gardens have also begun their spring clean-ups and planting. It’s amazing how many weeds move in over the winter, but our gardeners are determined to have the garden beds ready for planting very soon.

Many MGs and interns have signed up for Plant Clinics and Community Events Tables. These events provide a wonderful opportunity to talk with residents and answer their gardening questions. 

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

Linda

May 2026 MG Recognitions

By MGs Linda Barrett and Sreemoti Mukerjee Roy

We would like to recognize the volunteers in our Communications and Garden Educators Programs for sharing Montgomery County Master Gardener news through The Seed, publicizing our MCMG activities with county residents, keeping MGs personally connected through social events, and educating schoolchildren and others about gardening. 

MG Imane Zouhar is the Communications Program director. She has several projects under way, including preparation of the MCMG Annual Report and upcoming social events. Imane also spends time brainstorming ways to streamline communications within the organization and with our wider audience.

Newsletter

MG Alison Edwards is the general editor of The Seed. She plans newsletter issues, coordinates the collection, revision, approval, and presentation of news articles. Alison ensures that contents adhere to MCMG policy, and last year she led the modernization of our newsletter from a desktop-published product to an email-and-blog format. 

MG Intern Pela Soto began ably assisting with writing/coordinating, fact-checking, and editing newsletter stories in 2025. This has taken a load off of Alison's plate in the early segment of the production cycle, for which she is most grateful!

MGs Amy Henchey and Betsy Wooster take turns providing copy editing services for newsletter stories, often greatly improving the clarity, accuracy, and flow of submissions. Last year Betsy played a leading role in compiling the simplified MCMG Communications Style Guide.

MGs Len Friedman and Dean Evangelista locate or take photos to accompany newsletter stories, which enhances the storytelling. They have also been building an archive of photos ready for use in future projects. 

MGs Jon Davis and MG Intern Jenna Boig compile the online listing of upcoming Continuing Education opportunities each month in lockstep with the newsletter production schedule. They stepped into this role on short notice when the previous person had to bow out at the end of 2025, and they have ramped up quickly.

Public Relations

MGs LeeAnne Gelletly and Hilary Longo are Public Relations co-chairs. They create the MCMG brochures, calendars, flyers, business cards, and garden signs that we all find so helpful to pass out at events. Hilary also creates the MCMG Annual Report and explores new ways to help connect MCMGs with county residents. 

Social Events and Intern Hospitality

MGs Linda Barrett and Carol Kosary have been organizing social events such as the June MG picnic at Derwood, the Holiday Party, MG recognitions, and the Intern Job fair, which all involve a lot of  “volunteer wrangling.” Linda and Carol do so much to keep the MG community connected, but they give credit to all of the wonderful MG volunteers who really help to put all of these events together. MG Sue DeGraba took over Linda's role starting with the 2025 Holiday Party, which was a huge success.

Garden Educators

The Garden Educators program, led by two co-chairs, MGs Pam Hosimer and Carol Kosary (pictured in the previous section), aims to teach healthy eating lessons to schoolchildren. Pam is the University of Maryland Extension SNAP-Ed Educator. She has conducted school tours of the Derwood Demo Garden and visited classrooms to teach children about how food is grown. Pam has also expanded the Garden Educator program into other areas. Carol handles the logistics of recruiting and coordinating over 40 volunteers needed to host more than 500 first graders across six Demo Garden tours.

Native Plant Nursery Opens in Silver Spring

A view of the new native plant nursery in Silver Spring 
Photo: MG Debbie Boger

By MG Alison Edwards

A new Native Plant Nursery opened in late Fall 2025 in downtown Silver Spring, located behind Progress Place (8106 Georgia Ave.) on the site of the Urban Farm formerly operated by Shepherd’s Table. With start-up funding from the Community Food Forest Collective (CFFC), this nonprofit nursery is headed by MG Debbie Boger, who is leading an army of volunteers in providing free native plants to community partners. The plants are installed and distributed by nonprofit partners such as CFFC, Shepherd’s Table, CKC Farming, Long Branch Library, and CHEER, all of which serve communities that have historically not been able to pay for native plants in bulk.

Debbie, the former manager of the Urban Farm, took on this new role with gusto in November 2025. The nursery has been ramping up this spring, and there has been a lot to do in propagating hundreds of native plants and maintaining a safe and attractive nursery. The team has potted up scores of plants that overwintered (mostly amsonia, columbine, Joe-Pye weed, and threadleaf coreopsis), moved around lots of plants that had “volunteered” throughout the space, germinated seedlings in more than 250 milk jugs, and sterilized pots for potting up seedlings when they get larger. 

Seedlings in milk jugs
Photo: MG Debbie Boger

The goal is for native plant installations from the nursery to help clean our waterways, create habitat for wildlife, and beautify our urban spaces. Using native plants in our urban areas is critical for supporting pollinators and other wildlife that are so important to our ability to produce food and support the broader environment. The nursery itself also offers Shepherd’s Table staff and others a relaxing spot in which to enjoy a little break. 

Debbie plans for the Native Plant Nursery, which is located adjacent to the Metropolitan Branch Trail, to be open to the public as a demonstration site at certain hours once the trail is refurbished and reopened. The nursery engages volunteers, including students who want to earn Student Service Learning (SSL) hours, but it is not eligible for MCMG volunteer hours at this time. If you have any questions about the nursery, please contact Debbie using her contact information in VMS.