Linn County Master Gardeners to hold Winter Gardening Fair Feb. 15

It may be winter, but if you are already thinking about the upcoming gardening season, you aren’t alone. Linn County Master Gardeners are, too.

This year the Linn County Master Gardeners Winter Gardening Fair 2025 set for Feb. 15 will include everything you’ve come to expect from the daylong event — a great lineup of speakers and a variety of vendors — plus new courses and a fun way to document fun memories with friends.

The fair will once again be held at Kirkwood Regional Center, 1770 Boyson Rd., Hiawatha. Registration still is open but will cap at 430. The $75 tuition covers your choice of six sessions taught by Master Gardeners, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach horticultural specialists and other regional gardening specialists. Plus, you'll receive morning refreshments and a midday meal. There will be educational horticulture-related displays and experts to answer your questions.

Students age 16 and older get a tuition break: it's only $37. Email thedaveburns@hotmail.com with the subject line “WGF student discount.”

First time tips

If you’re considering attending the gardening fair for the first time, this year’s cochair Angel Burns wants you to know that navigating the venue shouldn’t be an issue: Kirkwood is on one level without stairs or elevators. Hallways are wide and there are plenty of bathrooms. There’s parking in the building’s front and the rear, including handicapped-accessible spots.

Burns’ advice to attendees? Bring a pen and paper to take notes, money to buy fun garden art and a water bottle.

“Come with questions and be ready to interact with speakers and other attendees,” Burns said.

Past attendees who struggled with the Whova app should know that registration is seamlessly transferred to Whova for a better interactive experience this year. However, attendees aren't required to use the app: course schedules will be on each attendee’s event badge.

Gardening classes

There are dozens of longtime favorite presentations and a few new courses to learn from on various gardening-related themes. Courses taught on the same subject by the same speaker as a previous garden fair will be revamped and updated with new information. Organizers schedule the most popular courses in the largest rooms on campus.

There are courses for gardeners focused on flowers, others for tree lovers and many on vegetables and fruits. You can learn how to select and grow plants in various conditions, including shade and wet rain gardens. Perhaps you’d like to know more about preserving the food you’ll grow this season. Some courses will teach you how to create an accessible garden or how to garden with kids.

Is your lawn looking scraggly? Are pests and weeds driving you crazy in the garden? Do you grow your plants indoors? Would you like to make the most of the few trees you have left post-derecho? You can find courses on those subjects, too.

When you register, you'll know whether a course has a spot for you: The registration page notes which courses have sold out for each of the six session time slots.

“New and Unusual Perennials,” a gardening fair favorite, sold out early. But “Heavenly Hostas” has plenty of seating for gardeners hoping to make the most of a shady spot.

If creating raised beds has been on your to-do list, sign up for “Raised Bed and Square Foot Gardening.” Learn the ins and outs of gardening beyond summer during Session 2 “Vegetable Gardening for All Seasons.”

During hands-on courses, you’ll get to make a garden-related item to take home. If you’d like to garden year-round, enroll in Session 6, “Build Your Own Hydroponics System,” to learn how to set up and operate a low-cost mini-hydroponics system. The DIY taught by a favorite gardening fair presenter, Phil Pfister, Linn County Lifetime Master Gardener, costs an additional $90.

Angel Burns will combine two of her favorite hobbies — gardening and crafts — in her hands-on course, Session 1, “Homemade Native Seed Paper.”

If you have fun digging in the dirt and want to learn more, sign up for Angel Burns’ Session 5 “How to Become a Master Gardener.”

“It’s OK not to know everything. If you'’e excited about learning and excited to help your community, you’ll get taught,” Angel Burns said.

Guest experience

The gardening fair is just as much about the experience as it is about learning. Master Gardener Peggy Patters of Marion heads this year’s Guest Experience committee. The committee organizes and deals with everything from securing door prizes to working with caterers, ordering event T-shirts (pre-order only) and mugs (available Feb. 15) and more.

“There are a lot of moving parts. I’m thankful that this year we have more volunteers,” Patters said. “We’re ahead of the ball but we still have a lot of work to do.”

During last year’s gardening fair, volunteers wrote comments on a huge whiteboard in the volunteer room to ensure this year’s gardening fair improved over previous years. Patters said the comments are captured, typed, distributed and categorized to the board and event volunteers.

“That’s the first document we looked at and talked about, so we know what we could do to improve,” Patters said. “We take the feedback seriously. If people are consistently saying the same thing is wrong, we try to do something about it.”

There will be seed and book swap tables, a plant sale, including carnivorous plants and plenty of time for visiting with friends. Don’t forget to capture the day’s memories in the new-this-year garden-themed photo booth area.

Planning

The husband-and-wife team of Angel and Dave Burns of Cedar Rapids are this year's event co-chairs. Dave Burns’ role is to handle numbers and logistics. Although there was a post-event debrief last spring, planning began in earnest in July.

“We have a really great committee this year that is made up of a lot of master gardeners,” Angel Burns said. “We’re very lucky to have a great committee that’s willing to jump in.”

It's all hands on deck for more than 100 gardening volunteers. They coordinate with the 41 speakers teaching 72 classes and workshops, 34 vendors and horticulture-related societies and up to 430 guests.

Angel Burns equates planning the gardening fair to planning a wedding: there are invitations to send, catering to select, and coordinating with venue staff — plus a whole lot more.

“This year it’s our ‘wedding’ we get to plan,” Angel Burns joked.

The couple began gardening after buying a home in Northwest Cedar Rapids 11 years ago. They took the Master Gardener course together in 2021.

“It’s been a lot of fun coming in and learning from some of these Master Gardeners who have been doing it a long time. It’s been challenging to fit projects in and plant while working full-time,” said Angel Burns, a mental health social worker. “Working with gardening is a nice, fun break.”