Volunteer Stories WNC

I love to learn. I’ve been a Master Gardener with the Cherokee County Extension Service for three years. It’s something I’ve always thought about doing. I love organized classes, because on my own, I might not have the discipline to do it. I was really excited to get a book, to have classmates, to actually go back to school and learn something completely different than what I had done.

I went through the certification classes in 2023. Master gardeners go through a series of classes that expose you to all different types of scenarios from soil health to gardening to farming to agriculture to landscaping. The goal is that you not only improve your own garden, but that you can help the home gardeners within the community that you live in.

We moved to Murphy four years ago from the Midwest. We wanted to live in the mountains, somewhere we had never lived. I didn’t want hurricanes and my husband wanted to move to the south. We honed in on Murphy and moved eight months later. The soil in the Midwest was as easy as using a very thin trowel to get beautiful, rich soil. Our property in Murphy is very shady. We’re on a ridge. We have a lot of tree knots and trees on our property, which is beautiful, but it’s very, very different in this acidic clay soil to be able to garden. I really didn’t know what I was doing or how to go about selecting what would work, what wouldn’t work, what the trees and shrubs were.

I have been a gardener on and off. We lived in Phoenix for 15 years, and a cactus garden is completely different. I learned the hard way that you don’t wear flip flops when you’re gardening in a cactus garden. When we moved to the Midwest, it was condominium living. I helped organize a community garden for the building that we lived in. We had 50 gardeners and 35 4×4 plots on a rooftop garden. That experience taught me that I liked being in a community.  Gardening can be a very solo activity.

The Cherokee County Master Gardener program recently had 15 new Master Gardeners go through the program and complete it. Once you complete it, you’re considered an intern. As an intern, in order to become a master gardener, you have to complete a certain number of volunteer hours over the course of the rest of the calendar year. Now we have 15 interns who have lots of hours to get and a happy heart to serve in the community. There are different initiatives to help these interns grow and expand. We have a therapeutic gardening program at the Murphy nursing home where for five months out of the year, one of our master gardeners puts together programs for the residents. We develop and maintain three plots along the Murphy River Walk path near the pickleball courts. We’re building a new pollinator garden and wildflower garden. There’s a group of about 8 to 13 of us that work on that weekly for about three hours. Our educational program is called “Speakers’ Bureau” and it runs from May until October, on the second Wednesday of every month. It’s from 1:00 to 2:30 in the Cherokee County Extension Office annex by the Rock Gym in Konehete Veterans Park. It’s no charge to the community. Subjects include growing Paw Paws, propagating mushrooms, identifying trees, establishing a pollinator garden, planting deer resistant plants, and understanding indoor plants.  If anyone is interested, they can go to the https://cherokee.ces.ncsu.edu/news/master-gardener-speakers-bureau-classes-for-2026/ to learn how to register for those free classes.

For anyone that would like to volunteer in the community, but also meet like-minded people, learn, and have fun, the Master Gardener program is a great place to put your time. It’s fun to have a community of people who want to see your pictures when you text them a picture of what’s going on in your garden. Who want to hear about what propagated well and what worked and what didn’t work, who want to share and swap seeds and flowers and knowledge. That swapping and exchanging of information with like-minded people really was wonderful when you’re moving to a new community and wanting to meet new people who have similar interests. It is a wonderful hobby.

–Vicky Rozich, Cherokee County Master Gardeners Program

For more information about getting involved in the Cherokee County Master Gardeners program please visit https://cherokee.ces.ncsu.edu/be-a-volunteer/