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A year-round passion for gardening coupled with 50 years’ experience and more than 200 volunteer community service hours as a gardening instructor, mentor and coach were the winning combination for Mary Sue Colaizzi, who has been honored with the Sussex County Master Gardener of the Year 2007 Award.
Gardening is Colaizzi’s passion. Seated in a living room surrounded by plants of all types in her beautiful home on the bay near Rehoboth Beach Country Club, she glanced through the window at the sunny day outside. As a golden retriever nuzzled her hand for an affectionate pat, Colaizzi admitted to being inside only because January’s weather finally became cold enough to slow down work in the outside gardens.
“I’m really a garden coach,” Colaizzi explained regarding the Master Gardener of the Year Award. “I have knowledge and information to share and my personal reward is from being able to help other people grow beautiful things.”
Flowers are among Colaizzi’s greatest gardening pleasures. She said she strives to ensure successive flowers throughout the entire growing season. “The more flowers there are, the happier I am. My goal is to always have something in flower,” Colaizzi said.
As she walked through the gardens, Colaizzi pointed out the final remnants of her outdoor flowers of 2007. But she provided rapid assurance that the garden will be bereft of blossoms for no more than a few months before her early spring blooming garden with irises opens the curtain on the show for 2008.
Colaizzi said she has dedicated the entire third floor of her home, with skylights, to raising plants. She was already selecting and planting seeds in preparation for her spring plantings. “I grow most of my flowers from seed and generally start planting in mid-February,” she said.
Growing green
A gardener for 50 years, Colaizzi’s experiences began as a young girl working with her father, who grew roses. But her love for gardening didn’t grow until her post-rebellion years.
“I hated it when he made me help him with the vegetables and the flowers,” she recalled, marveling at how her father’s passion became her own.
Colaizzi has lived in Rehoboth for 15 years, since she retired and turned her vacation home into her permanent residence. Before that she lived and maintained a garden in Pittsburgh, where her family ran several small retail businesses.
“But it’s nicer to grow here,” Colaizzi said. “There’s a longer growing season, seven months instead of five, and no hard freeze until February.”
Though her home is filled with flowers through the blooming seasons, Colaizzi was fast to point out that she is not a flower arranger. “I’m interested and focused on horticulture,” she said. Horticulturists are involved in propagating and cultivating plants to improve them, she added.
After moving to Rehoboth, Colaizzi completed studies in home gardening and technical aspects of horticulture to earn the title of Master Gardener from the Delaware Cooperative Extension of the University of Delaware. “It takes a lot of work to become a master gardener,” Colaizzi said.
The Delaware Cooperative Extension program requires its master gardeners give 45 hours of volunteer community service, Colaizzi said. Enjoying the act of sharing gardening with others, this was a requirement Colaizzi said she happily embraced.
Colaizzi serves the community by presenting lectures on the art of gardening. “I love to speak to local groups and community groups about home gardening,” Colaizzi said.
Colaizzi also educates the public through her gardening column that regularly appears in the Cape Gazette. She makes presentations at the Delaware State Fair and instructs 4-H Club teachers and advisors, mans the Delaware Cooperative Extension Master Gardener Hotline and works in the Sussex County Demonstration Garden in Georgetown.
In addition to being a master gardener, Colaizzi is a board member and past president of the Sussex Gardeners, a garden club serving southeastern Sussex County with approximately 65 members.
More information about the Sussex County Master Gardeners, 2008 gardening workshops and master gardener training classes is available online at www.rec.udel.edu/Extension/MasterGardener/MGardener1.htm. Colaizzi can be reached at cattiva@magpage.com.
Contact Georgia Leonhart at g.l.leonhart@comcast.net
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