While your garden is growing, sow a love for helping others, too

Do you love plants and like helping people? Gardening offers scores of ways to volunteer. Consider some of your choices:

Join the Master Gardeners organization in your county. The state’s larger counties have active programs, and all you have to do to get dialed in is to call your local Texas AgriLife Extension office. Training takes place once a week for several months, after which you’ll earn your credentials. Then you will be matched with a way you can return the hours in volunteer service.

The Fort Worth Botanic Garden has an active volunteer program. Indeed, all public gardens do. The last time my wife and I visited Chandor Gardens in Weatherford, Parker County Master Gardeners were volunteering on the grounds. Find a garden you like, then ask how you can help.

Schools are always looking for volunteers. Some districts have horticulture programs, in which you can volunteer to water new plants in landscapes, serve as a teacher’s aide in botany classes or accompany field trips to nature preserves. Schools do thorough background checks, of course, so be prepared to be screened, especially if the district doesn’t know you.

Scouting offers another set of possibilities. You might teach a basic understanding of nature in general and horticulture in particular. Or you could help older Scouts with community service projects that involve landscaping and beautification.

If you’re involved with your chamber of commerce or a merchants or homeowners association, plan a cleanup and replanting day.

If you have a loved one in an assisted-living center, spend a little extra time on each visit enriching the lives of other residents. Grow flowers in pots to set near their patios, or take them plants that you’ve grown yourself. Simple, small plants of low care requirements work best. Take books about gardens you have visited or photos you’ve taken of your own favorite flowers.

If you have a favorite shade tree — oaks are a great choice — set yourself a goal of planting 100 of them in public places over the next several years. Set aside time the first year to water them every five to seven days during the summer to get them established. Contact small churches to ask whether they’d like to have one. Also ask schools and park departments, small cemeteries and not-for-profit headquarters. Your goal, beyond helping others, is to set yourself up for gratifying visits 25 years later to see the trees you planted.

If you’re an avid fruit or vegetable gardener, share your bounty. It could be fresh produce taken to a homeless shelter or preserves sold at a church or school sale. A flower gardener posted a sign alongside her front drive inviting people to clip a flower from her zinnia patch. The planting was always neatly trimmed as lots of people shared the joys of her work.

Finally, use your volunteering efforts to teach children and grandchildren the importance of giving back. Let them help harvest the produce, and let them carry it up to the door to receive the plaudits. Teach them how to water plants near their school. Show them how good it feels to show up at a bedridden friend’s house and tidy up the lawn and landscape. Those are moments you’ll carry with you forever.