James City County/Williamsburg
Master Gardeners

CW Nursery Projects

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Those of us who began volunteering in the nursery with the Colonial Williamsburg Landscape Department about 1993 have been involved at many levels, in many projects, in many ways. I believe that our first introduction was to pansy plugs, thousands of them, which had to be "bumped up" to larger pots in preparaion for bedding out at the various gardens! Out of that grew more "bumping up" activities, from commerical plugs as well as from in-house grown seedlings. We learned to know, respect, and handle - carefully and quickly - seedlings.

Under supervision we planted out bulbs in several gardens. We worked in the Nursery's cutting garden, helping to augment and maintain the plants chosen for their floriferousness and for their 18th century connections.We worked with the collection of tropical plants used for the Wallace Gallery gardens, offices and public places like the Lodge and Inn, and for container and bedding plants during the summer in Merchants' Square. These needed to be well-treated since they were exhibition-quality plants, some of them somewhat rare. Our attention not only involved repotting, but also vegetative propagation, outdoor care during the summer, and deadheading and other maintenance procedures.

While much of our work was, admittedly, of a "busy work" nature, i.e., repotting, it was all necessary to the operation, and indeed taught us much about the production nursery opertion as well as about propagation, choosing appropriate plants, and general plant maintenance.

Today the CW Nursery-MG Outreach Project gives hands-on propagation, seedling and grafting experience to master gardeners in training. Two to three master gardeners share horticultural research with the Extension MG Help Desk and help with the organization of Elderhostel sessions. The CW Nursery-4H Connection is exploring assisting a community 4H Program for middle school students offered at the nursery.