Fifteen years ago, my spouse and I were cultivating 6,000 square feet of earth in two gardens, mainly with hand tools, growing vegetables and annual flowers for ourselves and extended family. We were strong, and there was room to grow big and sprawling crops like sweet corn, squash, sunflowers, and cabbage, and deep ones like parsnips. We joked about having “more space than sense,” but it was beautiful and we loved it. 

As we aged and our lives changed, our gardens had to change, too. The next stage came eight years ago when we let the big gardens go, and built hip-high raised beds from materials salvaged from a ruined shed. Now we can garden standing up, with no more rototilling! We raise herbs for cooking in pots on the porch and the deck. We can also see the day when there won’t be time or energy enough for this kind of garden, either, and we’ll have to change our scope and adapt again.

It’s hard to describe the satisfaction of eating food that you grow or tending a plant that gives you beauty—it’s nourishing in every way. And, according to Terry Straub, the guest speaker for UMRA’s living well workshop on Tuesday, April 21, we can have this satisfaction throughout our lives, our changing abilities, and wherever we live. 

Straub is a U of M Extension educator and director of the Hennepin County Master Gardener volunteer program, the state’s largest and most ambitious U of M Extension Master Gardener program. His program engages 470 active volunteers, many of them retirees. 

Gardens for Good

After completing rigorous training in horticulture, volunteers work with children in a Junior Master Gardener program, and facilitate a “Gardens for Good” program sharing home-grown vegetables with food pantries and hungry families. They teach gardeners of all ages and abilities how to get the most out of their soil or their space. 

Hennepin County Master Gardener volunteers have a “Grow Yourself Inside” initiative to help Hennepin County residents enjoy the beauty and benefits of houseplants. They also help people with early stage dementia learn to garden with each other and with their care partners.

Straub has a particular interest in gardens—of many kinds—evolving with us as our lives and abilities change, so that we may always have that satisfaction of growing things while we grow older. He will have ideas for bringing lovely and productive plants into our lives in ways we might not have considered. He also has deep experience with developing great volunteers. 

So, if you’re interested in growing your own horticultural knowledge and helping others, he’ll have some tips for us on that as well.

Register for this workshop through the UMRA member portal. Registrations will be accepted any time up to and including the day of the webinar. The Zoom link to join the webinar will be sent to you in both your registration confirmation email and a reminder email the day before the program.

Please register and join us via Zoom at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, April 21, for some spring inspiration on enriching your life with gardening.

—Jan Morlock, UMRA Program Committee