O ne graduate of the program is Orono resident Kathy Lyons. Lyons went into the master gardener class in the winter of 1996 with little experience but knowing ahead of time what she wanted to do for her service project. A friend in Freeport was working up a grant proposal for the USDA's Healthy Foods, Healthy Soils program and recruited Lyons to teach the gardening component at Asa Adams Elementary School in Orono. Lyons, then working as a ranger at Acadia National Park, jumped at the chance to work closer to home, to learn and then teach gardening, and to shape the awareness of young children. It's an activity that gets kids out of the class.
Teachers can use it for any subject - graphing, storytelling, art.
And there's just something magical about planting a little seed and watching it grow. I believe strongly in gardens for schools. The first winter, she brought seed catalogs to the fourth-graders, and the kids, each assigned a letter of the alphabet, selected something, or a few things, to plant. Xeranthemums, of course. Oh, don't be silly.