Each year the Gardener’s Wheelbarrow Series is by far the most popular educational programs the Horticulture Agent does. The 2019-2020 program was no different! Although this series began as normal with each class being taught face to face twice with morning and evening sessions it abruptly changed when the Covid-19 pandemic began.

When we could no longer meet in person the Horticulture Agent decided to take the Wheelbarrow Series Virtually to meet the needs of Washington County Gardeners. Programs were turned into Power Point Video’s and uploaded to the Washington County Facebook page for clients to watch. When it was brought to the Agents attention that some people didn’t have Facebook the agent developed a You Tube Channel for clients to go to and watch the videos. A One call was sent out each time a video was uploaded to alert participants that they were ready.  For those that preferred; paper copies of the class information was mailed as well.

The Wheelbarrow Series consists of 20 class topics. The average attendance to each topic is 30 participants. Some of the classes taught virtually included Growing Hybrid Tea Roses (236 views), Lovely Lilacs (465 views), How to Create a Monarch Habitat (258 views), and Sunflowers (405 views).  The virtual class series increased the number of people learning about most class topics by 10-fold.  Responses by clients have been positive including “This is a great way to learn during a lock down”, “I didn’t know about this series until now, I will be attending in person after the pandemic is over”, and “I hope you will continue to put up videos after the pandemic is over for those of us that can’t get out”.