by Dennis Dalman
editor@thenewsleaders.com
Two Master Gardener seminars – one on flowers, the other on trees – will take place in Benton County.
Learning how to exhibit flowers to their best advantage will be the topic of the free Master Gardener seminar at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 29 at the Sauk Rapids-Rice Middle School Media Center.
People who come to the seminar should enter at Door 1.
Although exhibiting flowers is the general topic, more specifically the seminar will teach people how to select, prepare and display flowers for exhibits at county fairs and other competitive shows.
The seminar, about an hour long, will be conducted by University of Minnesota Extension Master Gardener Joan Anderson and flower judge Lettie Delk.
The second seminar is entitled The Future of Oaks and Spruce in Minnesota, which will detail some problems common to those trees. It’s slated for 7 p.m. Monday, March 28 at the Benton County Government Center in Foley.
Spruce is the second most-common landscape tree species in Minnesota. Oaks are most common in the southeast corner of Minnesota. For several decades, certain kinds of insects and pathogens have been whittling away at the health of those trees. What can be done, if anything, to moderate the damage? That is what will be shared by Gary Johnson, a professor of urban forestry at the University of Minnesota. He has been teaching undergraduate and graduate students in the U of M’s Department of Forest Resources and Extension since 1992. His areas of expertise include urban-forest health and tree production.
