2024 ANNUAL REPORT OF LAKE GRANBURY MASTER GARDENERS OF HOOD COUNTY

Presented at the Hood County Commissioner’s Luncheon – Dec. 16, 2024

This year 65 Master Gardeners volunteered approximately 5,500 hours to increase the availability of horticultural information in Hood County, through the Hood County Extension Service, in collaboration with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service. Through various horticultural programs, projects, events and activities, Lake Granbury Master Gardeners worked to improve the quality of life in our community. Achievements this year include:

• Maintaining and making improvements to the Demonstration and Research Garden, behind Hood County Annex I, 1410 W. Pearl St., including these major items:

• • installing decomposed granite in the primary walkways of the Demonstration Garden to improve accessibility, thanks to a generous gift from an anonymous donor;
  • adding irrigation drip lines to the vine garden and greenhouse, installing new pump in shade garden; and
  • replacing the windows in the potting shed.

• Offering community members an opportunity to purchase more than 4000 plants, adapted to the Hood County area, at the annual LGMG Plant Sale; we were assisted by the GHS Jr. ROTC. (Our next sale will be April 12, 2025.) We collaboratively promoted the first North Texas Gourd Festival, which was that weekend.
• Welcoming several hundred people of all ages to the 7^th Romancing the Monarch festival, which is held annually in the Demonstration Garden the first Saturday of October. (The next festival will be Oct. 4, 2025.)
• Providing monthly educational programs on the third Wednesday of the month January through November, which were attended by Lake Granbury Master Gardeners and 90 guests.
• Offering four Horticulture in the Hood community education programs for adults (one was cancelled due to speaker emergency) and one for children at the Hood County Farmer’s Market, to teach healthy eating.

• Regularly welcoming visitors to the Demonstration and Research Garden, including planned tours with:

• • 24 Retired Extension Agents and their spouses from across the United States,
  • Lakestone Terrace residents,
  • Erath County Master Gardeners,
  • Lone Star Street Rod Association tour of the garden, and
  • GHS FAA students, who made a presentation on eco-tourism.

• Working with the Hood County Library staff and volunteers on Phase 1 of the Library Beautification project, to improve the beds at the library entrance; Phase II will be completed in spring 2025.

• Recruiting welder artisans and artists to create the Monarch Butterfly Life Cycle Sculpture from our protype, developed in fall of 2020 by the Master Gardener class of 2019, under the guidance of Judy Duree and Jack Hoover. The sculpture is projected to be completed in spring 2025 and will be placed at the entrance to the Hood County Library.

• Providing horticulture-related tours for master gardeners, where they learned about

• • composting and soils at Silver Creek Materials,
  • begonias at The Botanic Garden in Ft. Worth,
  • B Blumin Flower Farm and flower arranging,
  • orchids at Dotty Woodson’s Orchid Greenhouse in Ft. Worth,
  • iris and daylily gardens in Hamilton County, and
  • creating terrariums at the Terra Botanical studio.

• Staffing a booth and answering horticultural questions at the Hood County Home & Garden Expo.

• Celebrating with Habitat for Humanity the completion of two homes and welcoming the homeowners with a personalized book of gardening info about the Hood County area.

• Creating a new committee to coordinate communication efforts, including website, twice-monthly Garden Patch article in the Hood County News (which has been provided by Master Gardener Phyllis Webster for more than 20 years), social media and events/classes such as the items listed above and

• Promoting the biennial Master Gardener training, which will be March 25 – May 27, 2025. Deadline to apply is Jan. 31, 2025. Learn more at https://txmg.org/hcmg/become-a-master-gardener/

Following the 50 hours of AgriLife training, Master Gardeners will volunteer in the Demo Garden and work with the Hood County AgriLife Extension office to provide horticultural-related information to the community.

For more information about our meetings, community education programs and special events, please visit www.txmg.org/hcmg  or our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/LakeGranburyMasterGardeners), email lakegranburymastergardeners@gmail.com or call the Hood County Extension Office at 817-579-3280.