This year, the Carroll County Master Gardeners are offering Junior Master Gardener Certification to any children in grades third through fifth who are interested in participating in the required activities, and who are willing to complete the individual activities that are in their own personal JMG workbook. As the children complete each section in the book, the parents and family will sign off in the book to show that they are satisfied that the child has completed the project.

If the child would like to complete his or her certification by the end of this school year, we will offer meetings twice a month to do the group activities required by the program. We will provide the program participants with a schedule showing which activities we will be doing each month so the child can keep up with the individual activities that go along with each chapter. It will just take a few hours a month to do these activities.

As each section of group and individual activities is completed, the children will earn a badge signifying their accomplishment. At the end of the program, a Junior Master Gardener Certificate of completion will be awarded to each child.

There will be no charge for the program itself. We only ask that attendees pay the cost of the workbook, which is $10. The book will be each child’s to keep. We will be ordering those as soon as we have all our children registered and we see how many we need.

The Junior Master Gardener meetings will continue to meet at the AG Center on the second Monday of each month, from 4:30 to 6:30. This year, we will also meet the fourth Monday, for the children who would like to be certified by next summer. All children are welcome to participate in either meeting, or both, whether they would like to follow the certification process or not. We want to make this fun for the kids, and we think that the activities we have chosen from the teacher’s guide really are going to be a lot of fun. We will be providing a snack at each meeting, and often the snack will be something related to the topic of that meeting. So we will eat and learn about what we are eating all at the same time.

We have a couple of field trips planned, too. Part of becoming a Certified Junior Master Gardener includes community service projects. We would like to make gifts that the children can take to the veterans or nursing home here in Carrollton for our December program. In the spring, we have a plant propagation section, so we will take a trip to the greenhouses at the University of West Georgia for a propagation workshop. We also will be looking for a public place in town to clean up and plant a small garden in a spot that has been neglected. We would welcome ideas from the parents if they have a suggestion for volunteer opportunities that would relate to what the children are doing here with us.

If there are any questions, please e-mail carrolljmg08@yahoo.com, or contact any of our Junior Master Gardener committee members, or the Carroll County Ag Center at 770-836-8546. We look forward to helping our Carrollton children become Certified Junior Master Gardeners.