CORVALLIS, Ore. — This year’s Growing Oregon Gardeners: Level Up Series offers vital, science-backed gardening education that enables people to build climate-resilient landscapes in their own backyards and communities.
Growing Oregon Gardeners: Level Up Series for 2025 started online on April 8. The series, which is free and offered by the Oregon State University Extension Service’s Master Gardener program, digs deep into the science behind invasive pests, best techniques in using less water, understanding what changes our trees are enduring, and harnessing the power of technology to identify and learn more about plants and insects.
The series includes six one-hour closed-captioned webinars that will be broadcast at noon via Zoom on the second Tuesday of the month through September. The webinars will also broadcast live on the Master Gardener Facebook page, and recordings are posted afterward on the website.
The series is open to the public, for the experienced gardener, and OSU Extension Master Gardener volunteers will receive one continuing education credit for each class.
The topics include:
- April 8: Low Water Lowdown: Successful Water-Wise Gardening
- May 13: Grow Shade: Why Cities Need More Trees, Please
- June 10: Vast and Curious: Explore Your World with iNaturalist
- July 8: Intruder Alert: Early Detection of Invasive Species
- August 12: Stress Re-leaf: Saving Trees from Climate Burnout
- September 9: Better Watch Your Backyard: Tracking Oregon’s Seasons
This is the fifth year the Master Gardener program has offered a Level Up Series. The series’ advantages are two-fold: a bigger pool of instructors and more people accessing courses, said LeAnn Locher, Master Gardener outreach coordinator.
“They reach far and wide,” Locher said. “The webinars have made it possible for hundreds more people to have access to gardening information they wouldn’t have had otherwise. It’s driven a record number of people to our Master Gardener website like nothing before.”
