History of the Master Gardener Program

The Master Gardener Program was first started by Dr. David Gibby with the Washington State Cooperative Extension Service in 1973.  It grew out of a need to meet an enormous increase in requests from home gardeners for horticultural information.  Master Gardeners have become a vital part of Extension’s ability to provide consumers with up-to-date reliable information.  Master Gardening has also given its participants a sense of community spirit, accomplishment, and intellectual stimulation.  

Early Beginnings

In 1974, just one year after the initial development of the Master Gardener program in Washington state, Gerald Marks, Missoula County Extension agent established the first county Master Gardener program in Montana.  This came about because of the sizable increase in the number of questions coming in regarding horticulture with no resources available to handle the volume of calls from the public.  Marks was able to meet the needs of the community by utilizing Master Gardener trained volunteers. 

The late Dr. Robert “Bob” Gough expanded the Master Gardener program across the state in 1995, after he began his career at Montana State University as an associate professor of horticulture and state Extension specialist.   The goal for the program was to provide the public with general horticultural information in a concise manner while promoting education through volunteerism.

Land Grant Universities & Cooperative Extension Service

A land-grant university is a higher education institution in the United States that has been designated by a state legislature or Congress to receive benefits from the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890. The original purpose of Land Grant Universities was to provide practical education to working class people in agriculture, military tactics, mechanic arts, and classical studies.

The Morrill Acts granted federal lands to states, which then sold the land to establish public institutions to fulfill the act's provisions.

The nation’s Cooperative Extension Service was established in 1914, when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Smith-Lever Act. The creation of Extension formalized the public distribution and dissemination of science-based information developed by land-grant universities and agricultural experiment stations.

Land-grant universities such as MSU have a three-pronged approach to the development and dissemination of knowledge. These three components are:

  • Teaching (including the teaching and training of degree-seeking undergraduate and graduate students at MSU)
  • Research (including research on the MSU campus and at the agricultural experiment stations around the state)
  • Outreach (MSU Extension programs throughout Montana bring applied knowledge and research to the public)