Kaye Winningham

Bradford woman named White County Master Gardener of the Year

Kaye Winningham of Bradford was named the 2016 White County Master Gardener of the Year. Winningham, who is an Advanced Master Gardener, said she is passionate about teaching children the importance of gardening.
Kaye Winningham of Bradford was named the 2016 White County Master Gardener of the Year. Winningham, who is an Advanced Master Gardener, said she is passionate about teaching children the importance of gardening.

Three out of the four seasons of the year, expect something to be blooming around Kaye Winningham’s home.

The White County Advanced Master Gardener, who retired as a speech language pathologist for the Bradford School District, has always had a love for planting and educating others on gardening, and in December, she was named White County Master Gardener of the Year.

“I was sick that day, and my friend emailed me, and she said, ‘Congratulations to the Master Gardener of the Year!’” Winningham said. “And I emailed her back and said, ‘Well, who was it?’ She said, ‘It was you.’ I was quite surprised.’”

The Arkansas Master Gardener Program is an educational and service-oriented program through the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture’s Cooperative Extension Service. State Master Gardeners take part in area beautification projects, educational programs and more.

Sherri Sanders, White County extension agent-agriculture, said Winningham was selected for the award based on meeting criteria in the organization’s bylaws.

“Different criteria would be the amount of sanctioned hours she has donated this year, diversity of her hours and her work that she gives back to the county, her enthusiasm based on if she attended monthly meetings and functions that we have,” Sanders said.

From a young age, Winningham admired flowers, starting with the petunias that lined the sidewalks of her childhood home.

“When I was about 4 years old, I would go out every morning and curtsy to all the flowers that were blooming in my mother’s yard,” she said. “I don’t know if that had any bearing on my later life or not, but I always loved flowers. … I just love seeing things go from seed to a plant, and the plant to flower and produce what nature intended it to be.”

Winningham became a White County Master Gardener in 2009, a year after her retirement from the Bradford School District. In order to achieve the title, she had to take five eight-hour days of courses. Winningham became a Master Gardener after she retired because the courses took place on weekdays. The courses cover material relating to fruits, ornamental flowers, vegetables, pesticides and more.

“You’re taught everything about gardening, and you get a huge binder to keep that has just tons of information in it,” she said. “And then to sustain being a Master Gardener, you have to give back work hours and education hours, and that’s 40 hours per year. We all try to join the 100 Hour Club — that’s getting 100 hours instead of 40. Most of us go way beyond that. We’re gardening nuts.”

Her service projects include maintaining the grounds at the Historic Black House in Searcy.

“We have sanctioned projects all over the county,” she said. “I chose to do that one because there’s not a lot of people. That’s actual digging and getting-dirty work.”

In 2011, Winningham became an Advanced Master Gardener.

“You take extra classes beyond your first classes to become an Advanced Master Gardener,” she said. “They can be all over the state. You have to pay your own way.”

She has also led educational programs for adults and children at Valley Baptist Church and McRae Elementary School, both in Searcy.

“It seems like everyone’s got my number,” she said.

Winningham said her true passion in being a Master Gardener is helping teach children how to garden and compost, and sometimes she presents programs on bees and honey. She said she helped land funding to start a local Junior Master Gardeners program, but it ended because of difficulty with scheduling children to work on a garden.

“Plus, if you [plant] your garden in the spring and late spring, school is out, so there’s no one there to maintain the garden,” she said.

Recently, Winningham applied for a grant to help home-schoolers learn to garden. She needed 15 home-schooled children to receive the grant, but only four signed up.

“I didn’t get to get through with that grant, but I will try again [this] year,” she said.

If children aren’t taught to garden, Winningham said, it will become a lost art.

“Parents today are too busy,” she said. “Most young couples themselves don’t know anything about gardening. They live in towns such as Searcy or even here in Bradford. Most parents have to work, and they come home; they’re tired. They don’t have time. They’d just rather go buy a can of something, open it and serve it. Gardening is a lot of work, and if you don’t enjoy it, you shouldn’t try it. There may come a time when we all need to learn to garden.”

Sanders said it’s important to teach youth how therapeutic, fun and affordable gardening is.

“Kaye’s niche is working with youth, and she is one of the first to volunteer when I have a special assignment, especially those regarding horticulture with youth,” Sanders said. “She’s a retired schoolteacher, so she really enjoys going into schools and day cares and talking to the little ones, and she connects with them.”

Winningham also said it’s much healthier for people to grow their own food. In her garden are tomatoes, okra, corn, a variety of beans, squash, cucumbers, strawberries and more.

“I can and freeze vegetables,” she said. “When you buy it, you’ve got all these additives in there. The more you can grow yourself, the better off you are.”

Winningham is also a member of the White County Daylily Society, which meets once a month to discuss her all-time favorite plant.

“I have probably 50 or more different kinds of daylillies,” she said. “I also grow irises and roses. You can’t beat roses. Up until last year, I had 70 rose bushes, but a disease hit them that’s called rose rosette. It sounds beautiful, but it will kill your roses. It killed all of mine except maybe five out of 70, and I was sick.”

Another disease has also affected her plants. Winningham’s pear tree has fire blight, which damages the tree and affects the appearance of its branches and fruit.

“Fire blight [makes] some of the branches of the trees look like they’ve actually been burnt; they’re black,” she said. “Every pear that we have has a blemish in it, and that blemish will grow and grow and grow until you don’t have any good pear left.”

Though Winningham hasn’t found the source of the rose rosette disease, the Cooperative Extension Service can help pinpoint an answer for other plant diseases.

“That’s one good thing about Master Gardening. If you just sit around and listen, you get all kinds of hints and information from others,” she said. “We exchange ideas. We’re backed up by the Extension Office, and they are hooked up with the University of Arkansas, and you can take anything to the Extension Office and have it analyzed to see what the problem is. If they can’t find a problem, they will send it off.”

Sanders said Master Gardeners save communities money with their incredible knowledge base.

“They pay back so many hours to their community that the city does not have to pay for,” she said. “They totally maintain Spring Park [in downtown Searcy], the Black House, Daniel Park in Beebe and the Rosebud City Hall. They do all of that at no expense to the cities.”

In addition to gardening, Winningham volunteers at Unity Health in Searcy each Tuesday.

While there are additional levels of Advanced Master Gardening, Winningham said, she is satisfied with what she knows and her Master Gardener experiences.

“I have so many friends that I’ve made through Master Gardeners — good friends,” she said. “We exchange ideas and work together, and it’s just a camaraderie that we have, and the same with the Daylily Society. I have a different group of friends there. When I’m with them, it’s just daylily, daylily, daylily. I really can’t imagine retirement without those two organizations and my hospital work.”

Sanders said training for the 2017 White County Master Gardener class begins in March.

“I would encourage anyone who is interested in gardening to think about becoming a Master Gardener,” Winningham said.

Staff writer Syd Hayman can be reached at (501) 244-4307 or shayman@arkansasonline.com.

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