Slide 14 in the new User Guide mentions contacting the local Master Gardener organization. I think this should instead advise user to contact the local County Extension Office.
Every county has an Extension Service Office (linked to the land grant university within the state). But not every county has a Master Gardener organization. Plus, Master Gardeners only deal with homeowners and not commercial businesses – so you are likely to get some push-back on this reference.
Here is a screen shot of the slide that make the reference:
Marsha Lehman
Hi @mg.marsha.lehman ,
Apologies for the late response, and thanks so much for pointing out the difference between Master Gardener programs and County Extension Offices.
After checking how homeowners and international readers would read it, we found that using both terms on the slide made things less clear for most people. To keep it simple and actionable, we’ll use just one term there while keeping the focus on guidance that makes sense both inside and outside the U.S.
I really appreciate your thoughtful feedback. It helped us make the content clearer for everyone.
Thanks again for your feedback,
Stanley
Marketing PM
Team GeoDrops
Hi @mg.marsha.lehman ,
After discussing with it further with @homedigy-lawrence, I want to make another effort addressing your concern about the potential push-back. I tried to iterate with multiple alternative wordings/presentations (including mentioning and explaining the Extension Service Office), but they ended up being regressions in terms of clarity for regular homeowners. I’m wondering if you have any suggestions given this context.
Thank you for your patience,
Stanley
Marketing PM
Team GeoDrops
Sure! Simply replace “your local Master Gardener program” with “your county’s Extension Service office”. If you need to provide a starting point, you can use this: Find Extension in Your State – Extension Foundation (Find Extension in Your State – Extension Foundation). This is a list of the land-grant universities by state, and the county organizations fall under these.
If you want to highlight that this is specific to USA, you can do that. It is not in the current version.
As for what to do outside the USA, I do not have a recommendation. Perhaps one of the GeoDrops customers outside the USA have suggestions.
Marsha
Hi @mg.marsha.lehman ,
It has been changed to this.
Please let us know what you think of this revision.
Thanks for your feedback!
Stanley
Marketing PM
Team GeoDrops
Stanley:
The revision is not accurate. I would use what I suggested on Nov 19th. Let me explain why I say that.
While the folks in a local USDA office usually know the county Extension agents, they are NOT part of the same organization. (USDA is a federal agency; Extension is affiliated with the state’s land grant universities). Nor does the USDA office offer free gardening classes; their focus is on commercial growers. NRCS is a subset of USDA, and focuses on conservation of natural resources (land, water, …) – hence their acronym. Like USDA, the focus of NRCS is on commercial growers/farmers, not home gardeners.
I will also point out that Extension has specialists – some of whom work with home gardeners and others who work with commercial growers. In smaller counties, the Extension staff may be all of three people, and in those situations, the staff will handle both home gardeners and commercial growers.
Hope this helps,
Marsha
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Thanks @mg.marsha.lehman for the feedback. Just to be clear though, if we were to replace “your local USDA Extension Office” with “your county’s Extension Service office”, that would be sufficient, right? I believe we are already linking to the link you have included.
Thanks,
Stanley
Marketing PM
Team GeoDrops
“your county’s Extension Service office” is actually the best wording for folks who live in USA.
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