The Green County Master Gardeners will hold their monthly meeting on Thursday, July 25th, at 6:30 p.m., at the UW-Madison Teaching Garden, located at 5201 Fen Oak Drive, Madison, WI. The garden surrounds the Dane County UW-Extension office building.

The Teaching Garden was established in 2004, as an outdoor classroom for training new Master Gardener Volunteers and as an educational resource for youth programs and the general public. The Teaching Garden is organized into 12 garden areas, each with its own plant palette. The beds are maintained by Master Gardener Volunteers and interns under the supervision of Horticulture staff.

The goal is to enhance each visitor’s experience by making detailed information available to them about plants in the garden and information resources relating to each of the 12 garden themes. Visitors to the garden will be able to view over 850 perennials, shrubs and trees that are Midwest hardy. All perennials and woody plants in the garden have stakes labeled with their scientific name, common name, cultivar, and supplier. Each plant label also contains a QR code (Quick Response code) which can be read with a QR code reader on a smart phone or tablet. A QR code is a type of matrix barcode first designed for the automotive industry, but now popular outside the industry due to its fast readability and large storage capacity. Before coming to the Teaching Garden, be sure to search the App Store on your smart phone or tablet and download a free barcode scanner or QR reader application if you don’t already have one. Two QR code readers you may want to consider are Scan.Me from Scan Inc. or the QuickMark Scanner. Choose the appropriate version for your phone and decide if you want the free version or pay for the ad-free version.

By holding the QR code reader in front of the plant label, visitors are connected to an online web page containing picture(s) and detailed information about each plant. This is the only public garden in the area to offer QR scannable plant labels linked to detailed plant information on-line. To access this information on all plants in the Teaching Garden, visit: http://tgplpinfo.blogspot.com/.

The Green County Master Gardeners Association meets on the fourth Thursday of the month from February through October. Anyone interested in horticulture and gardening is welcome to join the association and you do not have to be a Master Gardener to be a member.

For more information on the Extension Master Gardener program contact Jackie McCarville, Green County UW-Extension, at (608) 328-9440.