Hello Master Gardeners,

We survived January and February 2025. We experienced a major snow and ice storm, floods, and even spring temperatures, leaving our plants confused about the climate. In Arkansas, there’s a saying: “if you don’t like the weather, wait until tomorrow because it may change.” The good news is that the Pulaski County Master Gardeners (PCMG) educational programs offer new knowledge and skills for free. I urge each of you to set a goal of engaging in any educational opportunity to learn and grow.

The PCMG Continuing Education Committee has committed to providing a four-part series to members and the public for a nominal fee of $5.00. Please take advantage of these opportunities and, more importantly, record those hours. Reading the Magnolia Chronicle, browsing seed catalogs, and visiting nurseries as you begin making new purchases all count as Education hours.

Even our annual Master Gardener calendar offers education in the form of monthly tips. For March, the to-do list includes some of the following: attend to lawns by spraying or adding pre-emergent to control winter weeds, fertilize pansies, prune hybrid tea roses, grapevines and fruit trees, plant bare root fruit trees and shrubs, and start seeds indoors for tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. Do a little research on the UADA Cooperative Extension website.

We are so excited about our new Master Gardeners—they have started out with so much enthusiasm and commitment. Mentors serve an important role in our organization, and any mentor session you have should count as either project or educational hours.

I look forward to working with the Executive Board members, our chairs and co-chairs, and Derek Reed. Our goal as a Board is to increase and improve communication between the general membership and leadership at all levels. At the February meeting, we implemented an “Ask the Board” box for members to ask questions about the Board and its processes.

Thank you in advance for your support this year!

Peace and Blessings,

Pam

We are very pleased to introduce the volunteers working to bring you news and information through the Magnolia Chronicle. Each volunteer is excited to collaborate on the newsletter and share events and stories we hope appeal to our Master Gardener family.

Sally Miller Wyatt, Maumelle Community Center

Sally Miller Wyatt has spent many years working as a journalist writing for magazines and newspapers, and as a corporate communications specialist in the insurance, education and health care fields. When not working she enjoys spending as much time with her family as possible, hiking, and cultivating her passion for all things gardening. After two of Sally’s three children moved to Little Rock she decided to follow them in 2023 from the San Francisco Bay Area.

One of her first tasks here was to apply for the Pulaski County’s Master Gardener training program. Learning how to grow veggies and flowers in this new climate zone, meeting new friends and fellow gardeners and being introduced to Southern hospitality has made the move one of Sally’s best decisions, and she looks forward to promoting the hard work of her fellow Pulaski County gardeners on this project.

Caryn Kinane-Setaro, Old Mill

Caryn is a recent transplant from New Mexico and a graduate of the 2024 Master Gardener class. She was a Master Gardener and an Extension Service Horticulture Consultant in the 1980s and 90s in her native New York. She brings a lifetime love of gardening with a special love for flower, vegetable and herb gardens. Arkansas native and pollinator plants are her new passion. She is happy to be volunteering with the wonderful team at the Old Mill and looks forward to working and learning through the seasons in that horticulture happy place.

Danella Snider, Pinnacle Mountain Gardens

Starting as a child picking vegetables in her grandmother’s garden, to adult years tending her own vegetable and flower beds, as well as caring for an ever-expanding collection of indoor plants; Danella Snider loves to have her hands in the dirt. In 2023, Danella and her husband found a quiet spot between West Little Rock and Bryant to change speed and focus on things bringing joy to their lives. When she is not working, Danella spends her time with the grandchildren, reading, writing, camping, hiking, boating, reading about gardening, watching videos about gardening, and tending to the fledgling gardens growing around her new home. Danella is excited to embark on her first year as a Master Gardener and a volunteer on the Magnolia Chronicle. She is looking forward to joining this wonderful environment where we can grow and learn together.

We would love to hear about your Pulaski County Master Gardener project! Articles and pictures are welcome! Tell us about events, success stories, community service, and interesting education opportunities.

The deadline for our May/June issue is April 15th.
Please contact Caryn Kinane-Setaro 
gonegardening101@gmail.com or leave a message or text at 720-388-0690. Happy Gardening!

Watching the Tournament of Roses Parade with friends and family has been a long-held New Years Day tradition for Pinnacle Mountain Garden’s Danella Snider, who also has a friend who volunteers to decorate floats in the parade. Passionate travelers who also have a healthy gardeners’ curiosity to learn how the colorful floats are made led Maumelle’s BJ Saunders and Janet Poole to join a Tournament of Roses Parade tour group this past December. The tour offered them exclusive access to the warehouses where volunteers were putting finishing touches on several floats before they took seats in the stands to see the parade up close and personal. They both called the experience a “once in a lifetime” trip.

A few photos (below) of Janet and BJ’s Pasadena trip are included here, as well as a link to a PowerPoint presentation Janet prepared for the Maumelle Garden Club’s February meeting. Danella tracked down her old friend and certified floral designer Melissa Bohl, who lives in Danella’s hometown of Lamar, Colorado, to learn how Melissa became a long-time volunteer for the parade’s float designers and decorators. Her interview is included here, as well.  

A “Magical Trip”

By Sally Miller Wyatt, Maumelle Community Center

Rose Parade floats are decorated strictly with natural materials, like seeds and leaves, along with colorful flowers. Just how are floral designers able to create these clever and imaginative designs? Gardeners want to know! BJ and Janet both jumped at the chance to join a tour group that was heading to Pasadena in late December, and they learned a lot during the trip. First, that the designers are extremely clever in the many ways they decorate the floats with only natural materials. But they also encountered an unexpected surprise.

“The trip was just magical,” BJ noted. “It offered so much to see and experience. On the warehouse tour I was looking forward to being overwhelmed by the scent of flowers, but there was none! We learned these flowers were grown for show, not scent!”

The parrot is decorated with statice, blue delphiniums and anthurium petals.

To view Janet’s entire PowerPoint, click below to download a PDF of the presentation.

By Danella Snider, Pinnacle Mountain Gardens

My family has a years’ long tradition of watching the Rose Bowl and its parade together every year, and I have fond memories of a house filled with friends, family and food—and a crowd around the television, eager to enjoy the game and tease whoever might be cheering for the opposing team. As a child, and now as an adult, my favorite part is the parade. Each float is an organic masterpiece of wood, fiber, plants and flowers – so many flowers! There is a team behind every design and their creativity shines on parade day.

I recently touched base with Melissa Bohl, Aifd (American Institute of Floral Design) and Cfd (Certified Floral Designer). She can usually be found at Thoughts In Bloom, a floral shop in my hometown of Lamar, Colorado. However, between December 26 and January 1 she is usually in Pasadena, California where she works on Rose Bowl Parade floats.

When asked how she got involved with creating the parade floats, Melissa chuckled and said, “Sometimes it is just who you know.”

A florist by trade, she attended a design show some years ago where she heard a speaker talking about the Rose Bowl. After the presentation she mentioned to her friends that working on the floats would be fun. Unbeknownst to Melissa, someone from her group gave her name to one of the companies responsible for creating the floats each year, and soon after Melissa received a call, inviting her to volunteer. She was surprised, but jumped at the chance.

She began as a volunteer; florists volunteer for one to two years before they can become contractors for the design company and she has worked as a contractor for eight years now.

Behind the scenes, work begins on the next year’s parade shortly after the Rose Bowl ends. By April or May, graphic designers meet with clients to develop the theme and overall look of the float. Following agreement of the design and theme, another group of specialists create the base and mechanical aspects such as engine chassis and hydraulics.

The day after Christmas florists, wood workers, metal workers, and volunteers arrive to begin work. The teams have until noon on December 31 to bring the float from the base form, a “theme and idea,” and a collection of flowers, to the final floats we see on the parade route.

The number of florists varies by float. Eight florists worked on the San Diego Zoo float – winner of the 2025 Rose Bowl Parade. Melissa and another volunteer worked on the “Welcome Home” float, sponsored by Hills Pet Nutrition and Pasadena Humane. The two of them put in 70 hours of work to finish in time for judging.

Everything on the float is organic. The florists only work on the fresh flowers, while the volunteers focus on other parts of the float such as seed, fiber and wood components. In Pasadena, the time between Christmas and December 31 averages 60 degrees, with lower temperatures in the evenings, so there is no need for floral coolers. Work takes place in a warehouse building directly across the street from the Rose Bowl Stadium and flowers are stored in a tent erected for that purpose.

When I asked if she ever had to pivot and change direction in a design, Melissa laughed and said, “all the time…it is basically an improv.” For example, a team might expect yellow gerbera daisies and open a box of sunflowers instead. Sometimes another float will have extra flowers teams can use, or a trade may take place. In the end, teams work with what is available.

People always ask Melissa how many flowers it takes to complete a float and her answer is “more than you can count.” Thousands and thousands of flowers cover each float. The roses usually come from Colombia and most other flowers are grown locally and harvested days before work begins.

The floral arrangements are created following the style of traditional sympathy floral designs using foam and paper mâché pots. The mâché is secured to the float with fast foam insulation and the floral foam is secured with chicken wire. The wire prevents the foam from breaking under the weight of the flowers when the float is in motion. Melissa’s favorite part about the process is early morning on parade day when the sun is coming up and it hits the floats. She said it is amazing and if you are close, you can smell the flowers. Melissa admits working on the floats often blinds her to the overall beauty of the design and sometimes she does not “see” the float anymore. She would love to be able to view the parade “through the eyes of a child” again. She hopes everyone who experiences the Rose Bowl Parade enjoys it. A lot of time, dedication, and love goes into each and every bloom placed on the floats.

By Ruth Landers, Project Chair

In the wintry weather as nature sleeps, many of us are planning for 2025 and the many ways we can continue to improve our local community bio habitat and promote the survival of our native species.

The St. Joseph’s Blessed Bee and Butterfly Garden is one of those places.  It was created by Central Arkansas Master Naturalists (CAMN) in 2016 and was designed to be a haven for pollinators and an educational site for learning about native plants and wildlife. Eight years later, it continues to flourish with increased diversity of native flora which in turn brings new and interesting native pollinators to the garden.

It was well designed with an in-ground sprinkler system and 5 distinct zones to host native grasses, wildflowers, shrubs, vines and trees. Early in its creation, it became a monarch way station with several varieties of milkweed for host plants and a diversity of nectar and pollen-rich flowers to provide food, shelter and nesting sites throughout the seasons.

In 2023, it became a Pulaski County Master Gardener sanctioned project which allowed more to be accomplished. The Master Gardeners worked on controlling of non-native invasive plants that were taking over the groundcover, in order to allow more varieties of native flora to inhabit the landscape. The majority of the Master Gardeners are also Master Naturalists, and additional volunteers at St. Josephs have also joined us to learn more about native pollinator plants, conservation practices and to enjoy the great outdoors with all the various visitors that come to see us. We also had an initial Arkansas Wild Space visit to determine what work we needed to do to become certified and increase the native biomass in the garden.

This collaborative team approach has been hugely beneficial to the status of the garden today. There is a positive energy and a love for this garden that is shared by all who work here. On our every other Thursday workday we can be found working on any number of a host of activities:  weeding, pruning, planting, collecting native seeds, transplanting, trellising and keeping a record of all that is blooming. We have fun finding new and interesting insects as we garden and stop to identify new caterpillars, moths, beetles, native bees and a whole host of other insects. Our breaks under the tree are essential in the heat of the summer and our popsicles are a must!   

Our main accomplishments in 2024 included:

• Removing non-native plantings that were invasive or provided no benefit to the garden and repurposed them elsewhere. They were replaced with new native shrubs, grasses and flowering perennials to enhance the diversity of the native landscape to attract more pollinators.

• During the Junior Naturalist camp in 2024, we created a new bee hotel prior to the camp and taught the junior naturalists about native bees and their habitat. They foraged for pithy stems using blackberry, goldenrod and silphium stalks and drilled holes into wood blocks to create nesting sites in the compartments. Most importantly, the children returned with their parents on the weekend and enjoyed seeing mason bees, leaf cutter bees and carpenter bees nesting within weeks of creating their home!

• The biggest project by far in 2024 was replacing 600 linear feet of cedar borders with cut stone. The repurposed cedar originally used was rotting out and infested with fire ants. This also allowed Bermuda grass to encroach through the gravel pathways. A NLR City Beautiful Grant was awarded for this project with the help of the St. Joseph Center of Arkansas. More than eight tons of cut stone were delivered at the start of the year, and along with commercial weed barrier and staples, we set to work one zone at a time. We removed cedar and dug out the weeds and soil to create a foundation for the new borders. We laid new weed barrier and fine gravel and started stone scaping!  We employed the help of S.t Joseph volunteers on group days and took breaks to focus on our garden chores also. We had a big push in the fall to complete this and sought help from CAMN at large. At the same time, a retired landscape architect stopped by to volunteer and it was perfect timing! An angel must have sent him! With his innovative design plans and eye on aesthetics, we had a great collaborative work group to tackle our gradient and water run off issues and improve the overall appearance with meandering borders.  We also had enough stone to complete the whole project and surplus to create two new shade gardens under the mature oak tree and by the steps to the east of the building. This allowed the Pollinator Garden to display native shade garden plantings. The areas were prepped during the year, and we are off to a good start with plantings of oak leaf hydrangeas, native ferns, phlox, Jacobs ladder, golden rod, and asters. Wild ginger, Virginia blue bells and woodland sunflower seeds were also sewn.

The border project was completed in December 2024 and our report for funding and thanks were given to the City of NLR for helping us make this happen.

Master Gardeners, master naturalists & talented St. Joseph volunteers applied weed barrier and designed methods to tackle the steep gradient on the back pathway to prevent erosion.

The volunteers worked to improve aesthetics of the borders and laid gravel.

In December 2024, nine tons of stone were laid and 600 linear feet of borders replaced. We have immense gratitude for our community team and what a sense of accomplishment!!

As we reflect on the year, we know that we had lofty goals which appeared a little daunting when we looked at the pallets of stone at the start of the year along with our many other garden tasks. It is truly a collaboration of these wonderful organizations who have overreaching goals to support and protect the environment, to showcase and educate others on the value of native plantings in an effort to bring homegrown national parks to our neighborhoods and preserve Arkansas Heritage for the future.

A huge thank you to all the CAMN members who gave time and effort on the St. Josephs Pollinator Garden Project in 2024. We have great plans for 2025 as we continue to expand our native footprint, create a free native plant seed bank, and help more pollinators find a home at St. Josephs!

We hope to see you in the garden!

By Donna Simon, Maumelle Community Center

Many people see dandelions as weeds and don’t want them poking through their lawn. But others rejoice at the sight of a street or field or woodland blooming with dandelion heads. I’m on the rejoicing side!

Lake Erie’s effect on winter weather in Cleveland, Ohio, makes for cloudy, grey & dreary days. Nothing lifts the spirits like gazing out the third-floor window of the Chem lab (where I spent many an hour) onto gilded campus lawns where dandelions bloomed in abundance, so anticipatory of sunny days.

Pollinators are cheering for the emergence of dandelions. These flowers make fantastic food for a wide range of endangered bees. Environmentalists must promote the growing of dandelions as they help reduce pollution by absorbing excess nitrogen from the soil and then releasing it into the atmosphere in their fluff.

Italian immigrants foraged the woodlands in early spring to relish the tender new leaves of the dandelion in salads.  A true treat of fresh greens after a winter of canned foods. Italians also made them into wine and jelly.

Nutritionists know the benefits of those dandelion salads. They are rich in vitamin A, B, C, K, calcium, potassium, magnesium, zinc, iron and beta-carotene with only 25 calories per cup of chopped greens.

Herbalists realize that dandelions are rich in folklore history for both magical and medicinal properties. From the Aztecs and native Americans to the Greeks, dandelions were used for respiratory illnesses, for anti-inflammatory purposes, to cure warts and as a tea for digestive problems. Dandelions can help relieve stress by releasing serotonin, which makes us feel happy.

And what giddy child doesn’t thrill to make a wish and blow on a dandelion puff so the tiny seeds will carry that wish to the heavens?

A few fun facts about dandelions:

• Dandelion seeds can be carried for up to 5 miles with wind.
• A single dandelion head consists of up to 300 ray flowers that look like tiny petals at first glance
• They have “lion-toothed” leaves (dent de lion in French means ‘lion’s tooth’)
• From blossom to root, 100 percent of this herb is edible for most people.
• The US has the greatest number of dandelions in the world, about 1.5 billion pounds of them.
• Dandelions are found all over the world except Antarctica.

So, if you’ve got dandelions popping up everywhere, sure – you could try to get rid of them; but wouldn’t you rather hold those cheery yellow flowers under your chin to see if your skin appears yellow.  A medieval legend says if it does, you’ll be rich someday.

Part two of the Planting with Master Gardeners Series was held on Saturday, February 8th at the Arkansas State Extension Auditorium in Little Rock. The event registered 173 ready for Spring gardeners from 9 counties.

Derek Reed and Pulaski County Master Gardeners, Joellen Beard and Don Ford provided instruction and resources for getting their 2025 gardens ready for production. Topics included: garden and soil preparation, starting from seeds or plants, garden plans and record keeping, companion plants and labels. 

Part three of the series, Time to Garden, is scheduled for Saturday, May 10. See program information and registration here.

Did you know you can log education hours by simply reading the Magnolia Chronicle? You can add this time to the following project: Edu-Research, Newsletter/Program Lecture.