Walt Stirm loves to garden, loves to teach, and loves to share the bounty of those two labors of love. It’s not always easy to measure the effect of one person’s caring, but in Walt’s case it has weighed in at over 2500 pounds of produce for needy families during the 2001 and 2002 growing seasons. Produce from 2003 is still being harvested.
Walt, an Advanced Master Gardener with the Tippecanoe County Master Gardener Association (TCMGA), organized and implemented the association’s 4000-square-foot Demonstration Garden at the Tippecanoe Cooperative Extension Office in 1997. As he labors long hours in the hot Indiana summer (battling rabbits, raccoons, deer, beetles, fusarium-blight, and crazy precipitation cycles), Walt satisfies more than the Master Gardener mission of “helping others grow.” He also helps meet the nutritional requirements of many needy individuals and their families, making twice-weekly deliveries of the garden’s produce to the Lafayette Urban Ministry’s St. John’s Food Pantry.
The garden is also used as a teaching lab in the association’s workshop and training events, and for conducting research on new cultivars and cultivation techniques. Although several Master Gardeners and other volunteers assist Walt in the garden, he provides most of the labor required from April through October to cultivate, weed and harvest the garden’s crops.
“It is a very good feeling to help those in need and at the same time learn the successful gardening process,” Walt wrote in his 2002 garden report. “Thanks for this opportunity to be of service.”
While Walt sees the garden as an opportunity to be of service, TCMGA and Lafayette Urban Ministry saw it as an opportunity to nominate him for the Governor’s Sagamore of the Wabash Award. Rep. Sue Scholer surprised Walt by presenting the award on Aug. 5, 2003 at the TCMGA meeting.