The opening morning of the annual New Hanover County Extension Master Gardener℠ plant sale falls in late April, and this year was my second time running it alongside our volunteers.
By the time we opened the gates, the stands had been assembled, the plants sorted and priced, and a line of shoppers had already formed across the Arboretum parking lot.
The sale started 38 years ago as a modest fundraiser for our local Extension programs. It has since become something closer to a well-oiled machine, drawing thousands of gardeners over a single weekend and taking more than 170 volunteers to pull off. For our volunteers, and for a good part of this community, it is the weekend the rest of the year points toward.
What most shoppers do not realize is where
their money goes. Proceeds support the consumer horticulture programs people here use all the time: gardening classes for homeowners, the annual Cape Fear Native Plant Festival, and the plant clinic that diagnoses plant problems for more than 4,000 residents and green industry professionals a year at no charge.
The Extension Master Gardener℠ Volunteer Association (EMGVA) is the nonprofit fundraising arm of the local Extension Master Gardener℠ program that makes all of this possible. Due to its fundraising success, the EMGVA is also able to award scholarships to UNC Wilmington and Cape Fear Community College (CFCC) students studying STEM fields and environmental sustainability.
One recent scholarship recipient from CFCC, a landscape gardening student, wrote to the volunteers, "I hope one day in the future to pay this kindness forward and help others the way everyone at this association has helped me."
For decades, all of it has rested on one weekend in April. A rainy sale is a smaller sale. When COVID-19 arrived, there was no sale at all, and the funding lapsed along with it.
That vulnerability is what changed this summer. North Carolina Cooperative Extension - New Hanover County Center established a permanent endowment for our consumer horticulture and Extension Master Gardener℠ programs, held and invested by the North Carolina Agricultural Foundation, and our volunteer association made the founding gift of $50,000. It is the first endowment of its kind in North Carolina to be fully funded by an Extension Master Gardener℠ volunteer association.
The principal is never spent. Each year a portion of what it earns is released, and the New Hanover County Extension Director is able to allocate those funds to where they are needed most within consumer horticulture programming. So, if construction closes the grounds, or a hurricane lands in the wrong week, or something none of us has thought of yet gets in the way, the classes, the clinic, and the horticultural support for our community can keep going.
We will celebrate the milestone with our full volunteer membership this fall. Anyone who would like to contribute to this legacy can do so through the North Carolina Agricultural Foundation at go.ncsu.edu/nhcemgendowment.
Gabriella de Souza is the Consumer Horticulture Agent and Extension Master Gardener℠ Program Coordinator for N.C. Cooperative Extension, New Hanover County Center. Reach her at gadesouz@ncsu.edu.
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: New Hanover County Extension programs gain lasting financial support
