Georgia gardeners want lush lawns and award-winning
vegetables.
But they also care about the damage pesticides and fertilizers
can cause the environment, says a University of Georgia
survey.

Researchers in the UGA College of Agricultural and
Environmental
Sciences are crafting guidelines to help homeowners choose garden
and landscape practices that don’t harm the environment. But they
needed information.

What Are Georgia Gardeners
Doing?

“Before we can develop guidelines, we need to know how
Georgia gardeners use pesticides and fertilizers,” said
Susan
Varlamoff, the survey coordinator. “The survey results are
helping us determine the level of information we need to put into
the homeowner best management practices manual.”

The survey was funded by the Pollution Prevention Assistance
Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. The BMP
manual will be developed with a federal Environmental Protection
Agency grant.

Both projects are part of a five-year program aimed at
educating
homeowners on reducing the environmental effects of improper
gardening.

“Our goal is to reduce nonpoint-source pollution, which
is a result of runoff from landscapes containing pesticides and
fertilizers,” said Varlamoff. “We’re also searching
for ways to provide correct gardening information to
homeowners.”

During the summer of 1999, 400 Georgians took part in the
survey,
which was designed by a team of CAES researchers and implemented
by the UGA Survey Research Center.

The survey asked gardeners about general and specific
practices.
It asked, too, where they get their gardening information.

Gardeners Want to Use Environmentally
Friendly
Products

“We were surprised to find that people are already
gardening
to protect the environment,” Varlamoff said. “Of the
people we surveyed, 67 percent are choosing products they believe
to be environmentally friendly.”

The survey showed that 45 percent of Georgians are composting
household and lawn waste for use in their home landscapes.

But where do they learn about gardening? “Most of the
people we surveyed said they get their information from
neighbors,”
Varlamoff said. “Their second-largest source was
television.”

The study also showed that they prefer to get their
information
where they buy their gardening supplies.

“We need to know where our efforts need to be directed
and how people want to receive this information,” Varlamoff
said. “Our goal is to educate the gardening public for
everyone’s
benefit.

“People need to know, for example, not to apply
fertilizers
when a heavy rainstorm is expected,” she said. “The
chemicals won’t have time to be absorbed into the soil before
they’re washed away. They also need to apply only as much as the
grass or plants can use.”

Open to Alternatives

Another key question was whether Georgia gardeners are open
to using nonchemical ways to control pests.

“It’s one thing for our college’s researchers to develop
and test nonchemical methods of control,” she said.
“But
this can only be effective if people are willing to adopt these
methods.

We needed to know if people are open to planting
pest-resistant
plant varieties or applying insecticidal soaps instead of
spraying
chemicals.”

The answer? Most are very willing to try.

Of the people surveyed, 69 percent said they want to learn
more about alternative ways to control pests, and 72 percent are
willing to plant pest-resistant varieties.

“People are becoming more and more aware of alternative
methods because they’re becoming more available in gardening
centers,”
Varlamoff said. “You can even buy lady beetles over the
counter
now.”

Weed-free Lawns a Top
Priority

But the quest for the perfect, weed-free lawn is also a top
priority. The survey found that:

* 67 percent rated a weed-free lawn as very important.

* 41 percent use herbicides to control weeds.

* 23 percent apply fungicides to control diseases.

* 63 percent apply insecticides to control insects.

“All these chemical controls can be contributing factors
to runoff pollution,” she said.

Varlamoff is confident a BMP manual would help Georgia
gardeners
and the environment.

“Now that we know the kinds of information Georgian
gardeners
want and need, we’re developing our best management practices
manual,” she said.

“The manual will first be used to train people who enroll
in the University of Georgia’s Advanced Master Gardeners Program
through the county extension offices,” she said. “The
information will eventually be available through all media:
newspapers,
television, radio, fax newsletters and the Internet.”