Category: GCMGA Volunteer Projects

We are gardeners and are a unique group of people who love all kinds and types of plants and relish digging in the dirt.  We became Master Gardeners to improve our knowledge and do better in our own gardens.  Part of being a certified Master Gardener is the requirement to volunteer each year – somewhere within our county – in some way – and give a few hours of our time.  For many, the enjoyment of being a Master Gardener is learning from each other and sharing what we’ve learned and know with the other folks. At our recent garden tour, with our members serving as docents in the participating gardens, we had the opportunity to share our gardening knowledge with those visitors.  Our volunteer docents, wearing aprons and badges to identify themselves, masked and practicing social distancing due to the pandemic, relayed unique information about each of the seven…

This event provided families with a fun-filled night at Vines Park, Saturday, October 26th.  GCMGA members who work Vines Park weekly (known as the Viners) dreamed up this event and built props to create a haunted walk through Phantom Village in the Asian Garden area of the park.  Families played games, watched for Godzilla and the T. Rex, snacked and enjoyed the Bouncy House while waiting for their guided tour to begin.  Folks helped investigate a murder in Phantom Village.  They walked past the Sheriff’s Office and Jail, Poker Zombies, and the Operating Room.  Then past Zombie barbies, over the Snapping Turtle Bridge, by the Witches Cauldron and cornstalks to enter through tunnel with creepy hands coming from the walls to enter Phantom Village.  They passed the fortune teller, the table with Zombie heads and were frightened in the cemetery.  On they walked past the Giant crow, the zombie Mom…

The brainstorm idea from the regular Gwinnett County Master Gardener Association members who work weekly at the Vines grew into a Halloween adventure.  They planned and executed Odie’s murder story with a walk and talk through the Asian Gardens that had multiple sets of spooky stuff – from the graveyard to Ptomaine Kitchen to skeletons in boats and much, much more.  On October 27th, many GCMGA members with enthusiastic teen volunteers and family members worked with Gwinnett County Parks and Rec folks to provide Terror on the Trail at Vines Park in Loganville.   To quote Kim Shealy of Parks and Rec: “There are many highlights of the event that need to be shared-like-one tour had the opportunity to see a volunteer go for a swim in the lake, another tour had a volunteer walk off with the grave digger, another one had a lawyer/detective in the group that gathered…