As part of the 2025 GMGA Conference held October 17-18, 2025, in Macon, program coordinators were invited to create a poster to share about a great project or a special program coordination effort in their county program. Four posters were displayed during the conference. Conference attendees joined in the fun by reviewing and voting for the posters, resulting in a People’s Choice winner (find out the winner at the end of this post)! Below are the poster entries and abstracts. Read more about these projects, and you may inspired to try something new!
In an effort to better reach community members who are struggling with their home garden, Glynn County Master Gardeners have created the Meet Me in the Garden (MMITG) and 4-H Garden Club monthly meetings in the Madge Merritt 4-H Teaching Garden. These educational programs offer the opportunity for all community members to learn specifics of fruit, vegetable, pollinator, and native plant gardening in Coastal Georgia. In 2024, these programs reached a broad audience of homeowners and children who have gained new gardening skills.Plant phenology, or the timing of seasonal events such as flowering, leaf emergence, and color change, offers valuable insights for gardeners and climatologists alike. To prepare for a statewide phenology monitoring study, two pilot sessions were held in June 2025 with 21 UGA Master Gardener Extension Volunteers (MGEVs) in Clarke and Fayette counties. The pilots aimed to evaluate Citizen Science mobile apps and improve training materials. Each session introduced phenology concepts and trained participants to record phenology data using mobile apps (iNaturalist, Budburst, and/or PlantNet). Participants completed tasks in each app, rated app usability and task difficulty, and shared feedback in group discussions. MGEVs found Budburst intuitive for phenology data entry and iNaturalist useful for plant identification. Although no single app was preferred, researchers selected iNaturalist for the statewide study due to its data quality features. Feedback from both pilots informed the development of new online training materials for the statewide study. These pilots demonstrated that MGEVs can meaningfully contribute to Citizen Science data collection while gaining hands-on experience with mobile technology.Identification of beneficial and pest insects is important for master gardeners to carry out various community education activities such as participating in the Great Southeastern Pollinator Census and managing school gardens. Insect identification is also crucial for green industry professionals in maintaining urban landscapes. Funded by UGA Center for Urban Ag, UGA Dougherty County Extension organized a workshop titled “Insects Around Us: Beneficials & Pests” on August 13, 2024, in Albany, GA to educate the local MGEVs and green industry professionals about the key beneficial and pest insects in gardens, lawns, landscapes and urban farms. The workshop aimed to strengthen the effectiveness of MGEV-led projects and to promote the sustainability of urban horticulture. A total of 33 participants observed over 200 insect specimens to characterize the key identifying morphological characteristics of common beneficial and pest insects. An interactive presentation was also utilized to discuss the importance of pollinators, to disseminate information on the Great Southeastern Pollinator Census 2024 and to illustrate other beneficial and pest insects whose specimens were unavailable. Several UGA Extension publications on beneficial and pest insects were also distributed to all the participants as resource materials. The impact evaluation survey administered at the end of the workshop revealed that 76% of the participants reported an increase in their knowledge level on beneficial and pest insects, 88% of the participants planned to use the information provided in the workshop and 85% of the participants agreed that this program will help them make decisions about insect management.When it comes to designing our landscapes, we often rely on plants available in the garden centers. While these plants are beautiful, it is important to consider if there might be alternatives that will provide more ecological benefits to the landscape. To increase knowledge about native plants and insects, educational programs and social media posts were developed highlighting different native plant options, common invasives and native alternatives, native bees, and pollinators. Programs provided knowledge to home gardeners to encourage native plant incorporation into existing landscapes and ways to conserve our pollinators and beneficial insects.
And the votes were in!! Fayette County Master Gardener Extension Volunteers go on a Quest to Educate Home Gardeners about Native Plants and Insects was selected as the poster winner! Congrats to Kim Toal and the Fayette MGEV program!
