By Cindy Meyers
Steve and I attended the Oregon Master Gardener Association 2025 Joy of Gardening Conference in Corvallis, on July 11th-12th.
Each day, there were three 75-minute sessions with choices of 4-6 talks in each session. On Friday, my favorite was Nectar and Pollen Plants of Oregon Reloaded by Dr. Andony Melathopoulos. Steve enjoyed hearing Logan Bennett discuss Soil: What it is and How it Works. We also had fun learning about various fruit plants in the Garden Trivia Game, a group competition using multiple choice by cell-phone.
On Saturday, I attended Growing Herbs in the Home Garden, by Geoff Puryear, head of the Xeriscape and Herb Gardens at the Discovery Garden in Roseburg.
Steve participated in A Historical Tour of the OSU Campus Arboretum, walking among the beautiful past and current plantings of trees and shrubs.
This was my second year at this event, and I highly recommend it, not only for the wide variety of topics covered in the talks & tours, but also for the garden books and accessories for sale, the amazing offerings at the silent auction, keynote speeches, networking with other Master Gardeners, and of course, the awards!
We received certificates (pictured above) on behalf of Curry County Master Gardeners in recognition of grants awarded, the Karl Carlson grant for the development of gardening projects at Pacific High School in Port Orford and the Marje Luce Search for Excellence grant for our new Greenhouse.
