Landscape & Ornamentals
CONSUMER HORTICULTURE
The consumer horticulture program reaches clientele in every county in the state including answering home gardening questions, plant ID and troubleshooting for disease and insect problems. In addition there are hundreds of gardening seminars, workshops and garden tours that are held across the state each year. Our largest event in the Arkansas Flower and Garden Show with an average attendance of 10,000 people.
Arkansas Master Gardener Program
There are 3,465 Master Gardners in 65 of our 75 counties. Each year 400 new volunteers are given 40 hours of horticulture education which they then in turn give back by volunteering their time helping in county offices, in schools, nursing homes and in community education and beautification efforts. Last year alone they gave 164,000 hours of volunteer time to our program.
Statewide programs include the Master Gardner state conference with 500 plus attendees, leadership training, Annual to Perennial trainings (for 1st year members) and advanced MG training.
NURSERY PRODUCTION & MANAGEMENT
Research in this area involves applied field studies focused primarily on topics related to wholesale nursery production and the landscape industry. This research tends to focus on plant production issues (substrates, nutrition, weed control) and plant evaluation.
Current focus is in two areas: 1) use of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) in nursery production, and 2) monitoring and control of crapemyrtle bark scale.
