Join Growing Gardeners and Be an Agent of Change

by Ann Ramirez

Change! It is that time of the year when our spring efforts in the vegetable garden end and a new fall garden emerges. Many trees show beautiful colors before they lose their leaves, and our homes start to have seasonal changes.

Growing Gardeners has had many changes. Historically, we moved from an in-person platform to all Zoom presentations when COVID forced us to change our delivery to keep everyone healthy. As the restrictions were lifted, we changed to add an in-person class that we continue today. The change to Zoom allowed us to reach almost 60 students per course vs. 25 when we met in person. The instructors can present from their homes, Alaska or the Sonoma coast. The students appreciate the time savings of not needing to drive up to 45 minutes to attend the classes.

Feedback is a gift that we receive from the students through class reviews. This feedback allows us to grow and provide better information delivery. As a group, we examine the comments we receive from our students after every session. We look to improve and make changes that make the program better for the students. The students’ overwhelming comment, time after time, is that they appreciate the presenters’ enthusiasm, professionalism and knowledge that they provide to them. On the in-person days, they express their gratitude to the whole Team behind the scenes and the presenters.

As we look ahead to 2025, we are hoping to add UC Master Gardeners who are interested in jammy jobs (team recruitment and staffing of each course, document management and liaison between the Team and the students), classroom support during Zoom classes (Host, Q and A and tech support), in-person day staffing (timer, registration and assistant to the presenters) and presenters with experience with our various subjects, in order to continue the tradition of delivering basic knowledge about growing a vegetable garden in Contra Costa County.

We have many wonderful CoCoMGs on the Team. The addition of others for the various areas opens the door to the flexibility to attend 1–2 classes instead of all 3–4. Many of our team members have hands in many pots and are often stretched thin. One of the beautiful aspects of the Growing Gardeners program is that we have many people providing pieces to the puzzle to support this valuable program.

We welcome any interested UC Master Gardeners to join our Team, help us continue to be agents of change and provide the best program we can for our county’s beginning vegetable gardeners.