The Yavapai County Master Gardeners are highly trained volunteers.
Once they finish 16 weeks of classes, 50 service hours and pass an exam, they roam Yavapai County, like errant knights, spreading greenery and evidenced-based plant advice wherever it is needed.
Instead of helmets, the master gardeners, organized by the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension, don broad-brimmed hats, and instead of lances they tilt with shovels, trowels and buckets.
This week, a troupe of the county’s master gardeners descended on the Sedona City Hall complex, staging their gear by two planters in the plaza.
Their mission: Transform 180 square feet of bare dirt into enchanted forests of native, drought-tolerant plants.
Last May, the city of Sedona’s facilities maintenance manager, Larry Farhat, and Mckenzie Jones, the city’s sustainability coordinator, requested the master gardeners’ help in creating two demonstration gardens to beautify the complex and teach the people of the realm how to create their own low-water gardens. The master gardeners answered the call.
West Sedona resident Rosemary Zimmerman is chairing the project.
Experienced and knowledgeable master gardener Lesley Alward, of Prescott, is Zimmerman’s Lancelot — her “landscape design artist par excellence,” as Zimmerman put it.
Alward designed the low-water gardens and guided the less experienced gardeners as they planted native succulents, wild flowers, grasses and trees on planting day, Wednesday, Sept. 8.
As several people looked on, Alward eased a Perry agave, the size of a large pineapple top, into a hole, then loosened the roots of the plant before pushing in soil to fill in the rest of the hole. Always wet the soil after planting, she reminded the onlookers.
The master gardeners are replacing the existing sprinkler system with a drip irrigation system, which uses water more efficiently. A circular knob at the end of small tube will slowly drip water directly the roots of each of the plants.
Besides being low-maintenance and desert-hardy, many of the plants Alward selected are intended to attract butterflies and hummingbirds. The red yucca’s trumpet-like flowers are one draw for hummingbirds in the new garden, she said.
“Creating a habitat is kind of enticing to me,” she said.
Master gardeners Lora Gale and Elizabeth Sexton worked in a nearby planter with a sapling-sized desert-willow, a drought tolerant tree that produces “orchid-like” flowers, according to Alward.
Eventually, the willow will grow out, forming a canopy of partial shade for the flowers beneath — columbines, globe mallow and a variety of grama grass called “Blonde Ambition.”
“This is like a kid in a candy store,” Sexton said of working on the planters. She said there is joy in starting a garden and then watching it develop. “They will all grow together and create a symphony of plants.”
The city of Sedona will take over maintenance of the gardens once they are complete.
Besides creating demonstration gardens, the Yavapai County master gardeners staff the Camp Verde help desk of the Cooperative Extension, they teach classes and give talks on growing plants in Yavapai County.
Learn more at the Yavapai Master Gardeners link at extension.arizona.edu.
