Even though many of us in the North State can and do work in our vegetable gardens year-round, March, April and May are such traditional vegetable seed and seedling start times that I have been focusing a lot of my energy on my raised vegetable beds these past few weeks. Finishing up the winter-grown veggies like bok choy, winter lettuce and the last of the bulbing fennel (which was delicious braised in a light chicken stock), gave me room for carrot, beets, spring lettuce, snap pea seeds as well as potatoes. I have just enough room left to put out my tomato plants and basil seeds when the night temperatures stay reliably above 50 degrees. Photo: Bulbing fennel.

Vegetable gardening, growing fruit and nut trees, berry vines, etc. - any gardening you do that results in an edible item, is often termed Edible Landscaping. I think the use of this “fancy” term was introduced in order to 1. Make it clear that you’re talking about gardening for food production, and 2. Suggest that vegetable and fruit gardening is every bit as attractive in the landscape as “ornamental” flower and tree-type gardening.
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In 2003, Shasta College in Redding became a host college for the California Extension Master Gardener Program. Leimone Waite, who has been a Horticulture Instructor at the college since 1998, is the administrator of the very successful Master Gardener Program there. At Shasta College, a member of the California Community College System of schools, the program is a collaborative venture between the college and the University of California system’s Agricultural Extension offices, which officially oversees and is responsible for the Master Gardener program throughout the state of California. Butte County began hosting a Master Gardener program in 2008 and will run the training every other year.

The Master Gardener program was originally conceived and started in Washington State in 1972 by David Gibby, Ph.D, a horticultural Extension agent for the University of Washington.
But wait. To truly understand the Master Gardener program, you need to understand a little bit about the history of the agricultural or horticultural Extension Agent system, and to understand that, you need to understand a little bit about American history.

If that sounds almost Epic - it is. The rigorously trained, enthusiastic volunteer corps we now know as Master Gardeners are at the end of one thread of the history of Westward Expansion, the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions, and the subsequent suburbanization and even more recent Technological Revolution of the United States. In my humble opinion, the Master Gardener program is one shining example of a good and effective marriage between government resources, educational institutions and those of us at home on the farm – or in the garden as it were.
According to what is now known as the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service:

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Warm, smoky, mouth-watering and full-bodied. That was the dominant sensory experience on a walk around Nancy Heinzel and Brian Marshall’s market garden, Sawmill Creek Farm, in late summer. The entire garden was scented with the heady aroma of Hungarian peppers smoking over hickory chips at one end of the garden.

Nancy Heinzel and Brian Marshall are truly avid gardeners. That love and passion became much of their livelihood, “like all good things, by accident!” says Brian, “about 10 years ago,” when they decided to allow their 1-acre garden to continue on its ever-expanding way and become not just their garden but an outstanding market garden. Today, Nancy tends to the farm as her full-time job and Brian pitches in half time, his other half-time is spent as landscape designer and installer. Much of the goods from the farm are grown to sell at various markets around the area – including the Chico Thursday night Market and the Saturday Market in Oroville, April to November.
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Teresa Wolk Hayes, is the Executive Director and founder of the Little Red Hen Nursery and Gift shop in Chico. The Little Red Hen is a 501c3 non-profit corporation whose mission is to serve children and adults with developmental disabilities (DD), which it does through a variety of hands-on learning and employment opportunities for the developmentally disabled in a retail nursery (for absolutely ANYONE who loves to garden), greenhouse and potting facility, and a home and garden oriented gift shop. Photo Above: Teresa Wolk Hayes, The Little Red Hen, standing in the front row with employees Alan Jackson, Kevin Dzerigian and Brandon Shoop, who are working the coldhouse crew under the supervision of Jim Belles, at back.

To meet Teresa Hayes in person is to encounter a remarkable combination of the legendary Little Red Hen of childhood storybook fame and a garden Angel: If she has to, Teresa gets things done ALL BY HERSELF, but mostly she likes to work together with others and she loves sharing the results of her hard work with everyone and anyone. And many of her results are made possible through the beauty and wonderfully therapeutic aspects of gardening.

Teresa started adult life as a trained Registered Nurse having graduated from Chico State. She had always loved to garden. But when her eldest son was 3 1/2 and diagnosed with broad DD, her life as she knew it tilted somewhat on its axis. During the next phase of her life, in response to her son’s diagnoses she truly called on the therapeutic aspects of gardening for herself. “Gardening at that time helped me to heal.” It also helped her to move her life to its next amazing phase.

One of the things that Teresa quickly discovered all those years ago was that not a lot of programs existed – interventional, educational or therapeutic or employment – within a reasonable distance, to help her or to help her son. But one thing she knew was that he loved to swim and be in the water. As time went on, Teresa developed a playgroup of other parents with children that had similar diagnoses and who also seemed to benefit from the experience of swimming. Swim therapy, more precisely. “It was a self education for me,” laughs Teresa, shaking her head, remembering. “It was parenting, networking, sanity, support and friendship - for the parents and the kids!”

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George Winter is a soft-spoken man with a large presence. “When he speaks, people listen,” one of his long-time staff, Sherry Rosen, said to me when the three of us met to walk through Wyntour Gardens in Redding earlier this summer. And for good reason, George Winter has been one of the most knowledgeable, smiling and constant faces of the Northstate gardening world for the past 30-plus years.

George grew up on a dairy farm in Gridley and his father went into the nursery business later in his life. After graduating with an Industrial Education degree from CSU Chico, George thought he would like to be a teacher. It didn’t take him long to realize that the nursery business was his calling: “I thought the kids were going to eat me alive,” he recalls laughing.

When his father was ready to retire in the 1970s, Winter took over the family business, the Red Bluff Garden Center, and when the opportunity arose for a second nursery, he jumped at the chance. On April 4, 1992, he opened Wyntour Gardens in Redding, on Airport Road near the Redding Municipal Airport. Every April Wyntour Gardens holds an Anniversary Event in celebration.

Winter attributes the success of the two nurseries to a couple of things – most importantly, his excellent staff who “love what they do and are knowledgeable about it,” and he has always made it a point to provide the best plants possible for our region.

In time he realized that one of the best ways to provide the best plants was to grow them himself. In the early 2000s, Winter started the wholesale propagators, North Valley Growers, based out of the Red Bluff Garden Center and managed by longtime horticulturist Jeff Brooks. Besides supplying plants to Wyntour Gardens and the Red Bluff Garden Center, plants with the North Valley Growers’ tag can be found at nurseries up and down the valley. And, in part on principle, plants from other local growers can be found at Wyntour Gardens and Red Bluff Garden Center.

“Plants that are grown locally are acclimated to our climate and soils, they travel less, need less packaging and ultimately are better, more successful plants that cost less for the nurseries and the customer,” explains Winter. “Growing plants ourselves allows us to more easily and swiftly follow plant trends, or help to inspire those plants trends – for instance by getting more varieties of drought tolerant or native plants into the industry.”

That impulse to inspire and lead the way in horticultural trends does not stop with the plant propagation, it is what led Winter to make both of his nurseries part of the Master Nursery association, to carry the widest possible selection of organic and sustainable plant and soil fertilizers and amendments, and to re-use or recycle all plastic nursery pots. Wyntour Gardens also boasts one of the largest selections of glazed pottery you will find in the Northstate.

George and his wife Carol are both avid gardeners at their home in the foothills of Redding. “We started with bare ground, nothing but brush!” George tells me. Carol designed the landscape (which includes several different gardens). They terraced the grounds and developed and installed an irrigation system. Last Fall they planted over 1500
narcissus bulbs on their hillsides “which were just spectacular this past spring!”

While having successfully been in business for more than 30 years, Winter still has goals for Wyntour Gardens: “I would like to improve our water gardening and pond plant selections, I want to see our events and classes continue to expand – and to work toward even more focus and clarity,” he says. “Customers are what make our nurseries great and I am honored to have served some local families for several generations now,” Winter continues. In order to better serve those customers, in the past few years, Winter has developed easy to use websites for both nurseries, on-line newsletter subscription services, and free monthly classes at both sites so that gardeners can learn and engage in the life and community of the nurseries.

While soft-spoken, Winter is a born communicator. In the past he has done a Garden Spot for the Channel 7 news, he regularly contributes to InsideOut magazine, and he writes a column for both nurseries’ websites entitled George’s Almanac. For more information about events, classes or newsletters from Wyntour Gardens or the Red Bluff Garden Center, visit their websites: www.wyntourgardens.com and www.redbluffgardencenter.com. Both the real and on-line nurseries are worth a visit.