Art Fuller has gardened since he was a child: in Pennsylvania where he grew up and worked in the steel mills, and in Hawai’i and California where he was stationed.
But when he and his wife moved to Winlock, they realized that “gardening here is a whole different type of category.”
Art had passed through and visited Lewis County while in the military, and he and his wife had fallen in love with the area, including the views of Mount Rainier. But the soil is different than what he was used to.
“In Pennsylvania, you just throw seeds in the ground and they grow,” he says. “Here, you have to know how things grow.”
Now, Fuller is the coordinator of the Washington State University (WSU) Extension Master Gardeners, university-trained volunteers who provide research-based information about gardening, environmental stewardship and horticulture topics to individuals and groups in Lewis County.
Volunteers must complete an extensive training program, as well as volunteer requirements, and take a continuing education classes each year to earn the title “Certified WSU Extension Master Gardener.”
But before getting involved, Fuller had simply arrived in Winlock and purchased a five-acre lot with soils he wasn’t used to working with.
“I wasn’t sure of anything,” he says, “but I was reading the Town Crier, and saw there was a program about how to become a master gardener.”
“I wanted to do things right the first time, not do them over and over again,” he says.
Fuller began with tomatoes, corn, peppers, camellias, and roses. “We had lilacs, magnolias, apples, pears, plums, cherries, walunts,” he says. “I wanted to make sure I was doing stuff correctly. I wanted to take care of these things without killing them.”
The WSU program offers year-round enrollment: students can start any time during the year, and take one class per month.
“Classes happen on the third Tuesday of the month, and last from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon,” Fuller notes.
Sometimes these classes include field trips to gardens or nurseries. “It’s good for people to see what gardeners can actually do,” he says.
“In Lewis County, the majority of the soil is clay,” he adds. “You have to learn how to amend your soil and get it correct. Summers here are also pretty dry, and that needs to be taken into account. You have to learn to work with the soil.”
This year, the WSU program offers several free workshops, including Gardening for Everyone, a free service presented in partnership with Centralia College.
But the group puts on more workshops than that, Fuller says.
“We put on workshops that cover all kinds of things,” he says, “from gardening in raised beds to growing tomatoes, or grapes, or workshops in pruning. We do all kinds of different topics, all kinds of free workshops.”
The organization also presents demonstration gardens, and hosts an annual plant sale in May at the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds, where 7,000 plants will be on sale.
“There’s nothing quite like gardening here in Washington,” Fuller says. “It’s really special.”
For more information about the WSU Master Gardening Program, please visit the program website or call 360-740-1216.
