Masterful garden?
Thinking about a walk in the park to celebrate spring? Mark your calendar for Saturday.
Then your walk can include the Penn State Extension Butler County Master Gardeners 12th annual Spring Garden Market.
It will be at Alameda Park in Butler Township from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.
This year, the master gardeners have teamed up with Butler County Parks and Recreation to bring residents an event that observes this long-awaited spring season, delights the inner gardener and kick starts the gardening season.
Plans are to turn Alameda Park, with its pavilions, shade trees and curving road into one giant garden party.
You will find vendors offering plants of all kinds: vegetables, perennials, herbs, roses, shrubs and small trees.
Crafters will offer their works, and there will be fun food to try. Children can join in with games and activities.
Add a bluegrass group, and the festival atmosphere is complete. It's pointless to resist.
Are you ready for the best part? Admission, parking and shuttle service to and from surrounding parking lots are all free.
The master gardeners have gone to great lengths to make this their best plant sale ever. They've searched out new plants and are offering new ideas for old favorites.
Butler County 4-H members, who will be in new bright green vests, have agreed to be valets and there is a new plant holding area.
There will be garden-related crafts and flea market items for sale.
The master gardener mission is to educate, and master gardeners will offer opportunities to learn how to improve your garden.
In the Odd Fellows Gazebo, they will conduct brief presentations that will include sessions on improving your garden by understanding the role of carbon in the soil, dealing with late blight, good versus bad bugs and how to help stop the decline in the monarch butterfly population.
Star Trek aliens frequently referred to Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew as “carbon-based life forms.” Everything on earth contains carbon, including plants and gardeners.Master Gardener Ben Binus will discuss how understanding the properties of this basic element will help you grow more vigorous and healthier plants.Seems like every summer in the past few years gardeners have had to face the ruthless “late blight.”Late blight is a fungus-like pathogen that caused the great Irish potato famine and has been wreaking havoc in our tomato and potato patches.Master Gardener Dennis Culley will talk about late blight, how to recognize it and what to do when it strikes. And he'll provide information on how to avoid late blight in the first place.TV westerns had their good guys in white hats. The bad guys wore black ones. The gardener's equivalent is good bugs and bad bugs, but it's not so easy to tell the difference. Master Gardner Maria Stephenson will explain how to tell them apart. She'll provide details on how to encourage the bugs that help us in the garden and how to keep the bad ones away.The magnificent monarch butterfly is declining rapidly. In one area in Mexico, where the monarchs spend the winter, in 2003 the overwintering monarchs covered 27 acres. In 2013, monarchs in the same area covered an area slightly over an acre and a half.That's a 94 percent decrease in monarch population in 10 years.Master Gardener Karen Beachem will tell you more about the monarch decline, its causes and what you can do to help save this beautiful butterfly.The Odd Fellows Gazebo will provide the stage for Bits 'n Pieces, a Zelienople bluegrass band formed over 25 years ago comprised of three generations of the George family. The group plays traditional, contemporary and bluegrass gospel music.The Butler County Children's Center has coordinated activities for the Children's Pavilion.His Kids School has planned a bubble craft for take-home fun and the Pace Learning Center will also feature fun with bubbles.Meet Samantha Roth, this year's Miss Pennsylvania Junior Teen. She's bringing her friends to help with face painting.Safe Kids will have information on safe biking, along with knee pads and bike helmets.A Brownie troop will host bracelet-making.Lifesteps and Family Behavior Resources will have spring-related activities.Dirt dessert-making, flowers in decorate-it-yourself planters, a duck pond, carnival games and chances to win prizes round out the Butler County Children's Center offerings.Children's Pavilion activities are free.Home Depot will have play activities for children.Butler County 4-H will have a petting zoo, and Alpaca Palace will bring an alpaca.The county parks department is sponsoring an auction where you can buy tickets for a variety of donated garden-related items.Food vendors will be ready with light snacks, sweet treats and entire meals.This article was written by Susan Struthers, Penn State Extension, Butler County Master Gardeners.
