Fayette County Master Gardeners
New River Master Gardeners
Welcome to the New River Master Gardeners. Formed in the year 2000, we represent Fayette, Nicholas, Raleigh and Summers counties. We are a volunteer organization that provides educational opportunities for people interested in gardening and growing plants. We generally meet on the third Thursday of each month. Meetings often include educational opportunities, club business, community project involvement, and plant and seed exchanges.
Recent Past Projects
Lowe’s Workshops – This past spring, we held three workshops at area Lowe’s home improvement stores. Our first workshop covered preparing soil for your garden and focused on raised bed techniques. Our next workshop focused on square foot gardening and gave the basics for building and maintaining your square foot garden. We also gave a seed starting workshop that showed people how to start their seeds in a timely manner to set them out after frost danger.
Tamarack Herb Garden – We are responsible for maintaining an herb garden at Tamarack in Beckley. There are over 60 culinary, medicinal, traditional and fragrant herbs in the garden, and it was laid out to compliment the architecture of the unique Tamarack building structure.
Lewis House – Located in Oak Hill, the Lewis House is a well known historic structure in town where we maintain an herb garden and flower beds. Here we have not only a beautification project, but also an educational opportunity to incorporate planting and gardening with a day care center located nearby.
Rain Garden at the New River Park – This is an environmental project and an educational venue about using native plants and wetlands to filter rain water.
4-H Camp – Volunteers teach kids at camp workshops about bugs, plants and identifying nature.
Energy Express – Master Gardener volunteers teach kids about planting seeds and how to read a seed packet. Energy Express is a summer camp for kids (K-6) that focuses on reading skills.
Earth Day – We set up a booth at the Fayetteville Earth Day celebration where we provided educational info and materials about gardening, answered questions and demonstrated seed planting to youngsters. At the Raleigh County celebration, we planted seeds with children both in the ground and in raised beds.
How To Join
Sign up for a FREE 30 hour Master Gardener Class. Contact your WVU Extension Agent for more information.
Brian Sparks – Fayette and Nicholas counties
Phone: 304-872-7894
David Richmond – Raleigh and Summers counties
Phone: 304-466-7113