[Speaker is Bulkowski, manager of teaching greenhouses and horticulture demonstration gardens.]
Bulkowski: Well, I oversee three full-time staff - Ann Hancock at the Perennial Gardens, Chris Noffsinger is in charge of the Annual Trial Gardens and Jessica Albright is the education coordinator for the 4-H Children’s Garden. On top of that, we have about 12 students that we have full-time through the summer months, and we carry six or seven through the winter months for the, well, for the gardens. We work outdoors, like I was telling you, through October and if not, later, and then we switch gears and go inside once the frost and snow comes along.
A week and a half ago we had what we call our Garden Day. It’s a day-long event where we bring in some nationally-known garden speakers, and actually this year, we had a speaker in the afternoon, she was a cook. She does a lot of cookbooks and such. She’s very entertaining. And, we also have a lot of workshops that the attendees go to, and we bring in vendors who sell goods, garden goods, in the henhouse. I think we had about 350 people for that.
Weather is always a challenge, as you see, it’s a little damp out here today. That slows us up, and we have to go inside and work. We have lots of events here, weddings. We have three, four weddings a weekend, starting in early May and going up until football season, and then we try to sneak them in between those non-football weekends.
It’s fun working with students. It keeps you young, keeps you going, and just meeting the people. I like meeting and greeting the people that come through. We have visitors from all over the country and Canada come by, and many other foreign countries. That’s a big part of the job too.
[Produced by Brian Vernellis. Media Communications. University Relations. Michigan State University.]