Carlisle master gardeners hold first tour

For Duane Fickeisen, being a master gardener doesn’t mean merely being able to tend to a garden.

It requires a certain dedication to both plants and people.

“That’s a major part of the master gardener program – educating the public,” Fickeisen said. “It’s not all landscape design or maintaining a garden. You want to teach people so they become enthusiastic gardeners who want to learn to care for their gardens.”

That education is one of the reasons why the Penn State Master Gardeners of Cumberland County Garden Tour appealed to Fickeisen. Not only will the participating gardeners get to show off their gardens, they’ll be able to give visitors a variety of information ranging from composting to plant pests and diseases.

Potential

What Fickeisen will teach visitors touring the gardens on Sunday is how to plant near black walnut trees.

“Those trees exude toxins that prevent certain plants from growing underneath them,” he explained. “We’ll talk about what might grow there and what won’t grow there.”

Though Fickeisen’s educational display will tackle that issue, his garden will show interested gardeners what they could potentially make in a vegetable and fruit garden.

“I have both an ornamental flower garden and a kitchen garden,” Fickeisen said. “My wife (Judy Welles) and I both garden – I do more fruits and vegetables and my wife handles the perennials. The kitchen garden has vegetables, herbs and fruits, like strawberries, gooseberries, blueberries and raspberries.”

Seven-garden tour

Fickeisen’s home on Pomfret Street is just one stop on the tour through Carlisle, which involves six master gardeners and seven gardens, including a starting point at the Dickinson College Community Garden on Ritner Highway. The tour will be the first of its kind for Carlisle master gardeners, according to Carol Crist, the committee chair for the tour.

“It kind of just came together,” Crist said. “The gardeners were geographically close and they were pretty varied in what they did. One has a compost and greenhouse garden, another has roses and hardscapes and one has a complete fruit and vegetable garden. Each gardener will have an educational display with a different focus at each garden – so hopefully they’ll be able to learn something from it.”

While Dickinson College Community Garden co-chairs Ann Daily and Jen Halpin offer residents a glimpse of what gardeners in the community are doing with their plots there, six Penn State master gardeners will focus on different points of gardening at their homes in Carlisle. Joining Fickeisen are Kathy Rodgers, Thora Schroeder, Pat McCallum, Kay Graham and Shirley Halliday.

Gardeners at home

The aptly titled “At Home in the Garden” tour on Sunday, running from 1 to 5 p.m., features each of the master gardeners’ own work at their homes – something many of them have only had time to share with each other.

The opportunity was something Fickeisen wanted to jump on, but that didn’t mean preparing for it was necessarily easy.

“I don’t know if you’re every fully ready for a tour,” he said. “You’re just making sure everything is in order all the time. I’d love to have an hour every day to put into the garden, but my garden time is more sporadic.”

Time in their own private gardens is limited given that Fickeisen and other master gardeners are required to fulfill certain training and hours to become a Penn State Master Gardener.

“Master gardeners have to take a series of various training classes,” Crist said, noting that many are required to take classes on horticulture, turf, vegetables and basic botany. “After their training, they have to complete 50 hours of volunteer work. After that, they can focus on a particular committee, and they’re expected to complete a minimum of 20 hours in the community.”

Because of their busy lives, Crist could not say whether the tour would become an annual event.

“We haven’t decided yet if it will be annual,” she said. “I know there is a community garden in town and Mechanicsburg is having theirs this year. Most only do it every other year. When we get this under our belt, we’ll decide on it.”