Purchase
Area Master Gardener Association
(PAMGA)
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(PAMGA) |
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New Horticulture Agent Named;
McCracken County is one of only three counties in the Purchase Area of Western Kentucky with a Cooperative Extension Horticulture Agent. January 9, 2006 we formally welcomed Dava Hayden as our new Hort Agent and PAMGA Advisor. Dava's webpage. While we welcome Dava, we also thank Bill Green, an extension agent from Mayfield/Graves County, for serving as our interim advisor during 2005. His willingness to drive to Paducah on a routine basis for meetings and events and to use his professional contacts and expertise to help us develop an irrigation plan has been invaluable. Dava comes to us from the University of Kentucky Research & Education Center in Princeton where she served as an Extension Associate for Nursery Crops. Supervised by Dr. Win Dunwell, Dava has been working with 40 commercial growers in Western Kentucky. On January 4, 2006, she delivered the nursery update in Louisville, highlighting diseases and insects found in Kentucky during 2005. She described her work as "cutting edge" as she was spotting trends and researching issues that are new to the Commonwealth. Her work in Princeton has given her entree to a valuable nationwide network of experts tracking the movement of new diseases and insects. In 2005, Dava worked on projects with two nursery cooperators. With Green Silo Nursery she has been studying the "smart pot" - a different type of container used by retail nurseries to deliver plants to the gardening public. One of Dava's passions is marketing. She sees one weakness in the horticulture industry as a lack of communication between educated consumers and commercial growers. Growers stay in business by offering plants wanted by the public. To do that, growers must either accurately predict the plant colors and attributes homeowners and garden designers want, or they must hear directly from the ultimate consumers and quickly respond to the buyer's demands. She believes the industry needs to do a better job of transmitting buyer desires to growers. Dava also has a keen interest in garden design which will serve PAMGA well as we seriously focus on a long-range plan for the Demonstration & Trial Garden. Much of her design experience has been with residential customers. After graduating from Murray State with a B.S. in agriculture (emphasis in horticulture), Dava worked two years in nursery retail and two years in nursery wholesale. In the retail setting, she was the "go to" person when a member of the public wanted to identify an insect or resolve a gardening problem. That experience should serve her well as our new horticulture agent. She has completed one year of data collection toward her Master's thesis and will replicate the experiment in 2006. She hopes to begin writing her thesis in May, 2007. At Princeton, Dava has been responsible for giving on-farm demos. She has also presented education programs to commercial growers. Both should help her develop the next Master Gardener class. Enthusiasm for a new class is growing. Launch of the new class will be delayed until Spring, 2007. While Dava is new to the Master Gardener program, she is familiar with Garden Gurus as she worked in the PAMGA tool booth during Gurus XII in 2005; this year she helped with the Live Auction. Dava has seen PAMGA in action and describes us as "go-getters," a term she uses to describe herself too. After attending her first PAMGA Executive Board meeting in December, 2005, she was impressed by the organization of the group. In 2006 she will offer an Advanced Master Gardener class. (Yes, those who went through the previous Advanced class may attend for a refresher). One of Dava's first tasks as Extension Agent was naming a horticulture council to advise her on county trends and needs. Council members include Less Evans, Chair (representing the City of Paducah); Larry Sanders (representing retail nurseries); Brick Green (representing wholesale nurseries); Steve Wurth (representing fruit and produce growers); and Carol Ullerich, Secretary, (representing Master Gardeners and homeowners). One of her goals as Horticulture Extension Agent is strengthening local understanding of horticulture. To achieve this goal she is developing a series of monthly gardening programs of interest to the general public. Some will occur at the Extension Office and others at the Demo & Trial Garden. Watch the PAMGA calendar at www.pamga.org for topics and times. PAMGA members are encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity to earn education hours. A native of Crittenden County, Dava and her husband Jody live in Reidland. They have been married since 2001 and have a 17-month-old son, Chase Thomas Hayden. Jody is a Paducah native and works at Mead Westvaco-Carbon Plant. In describing her worst gardening mistake and how she fixed it, Dava said she overestimated her ability to save ailing plants. Rather than saving her money and buying healthy plants from the start, she invested in end-of-season bargains and quickly learned, "once an ugly plant always an ugly plant." She's plotted the garden design for her home, (her husband's childhood home), and now saves for the items she really wants to incorporate into her landscape. When asked about her strengths, she said she considers herself good at "seeing the big picture." With fresh eyes, ears and ideas, she will infuse PAMGA with new energy and enthusiasm. |
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Purchase Area Master Gardener Association, 2705 Olivet Church Road, Paducah, Ky 42001 270/554-9520 FAX 270/554-8283 www.pamga.org |
