Lena was raised mostly in North Dakota, where she had her first taste of extension from her father, an agronomist for NDSU. Moving to Utah as a teenager, Lena learned to love the Intermountain West. While at USU, Lena worked as a groundskeeper for the university and especially loved when they’d let her design a new planting area. She also volunteered in the Biology department greenhouses where she could be close to plants from all over the world.
Lena married an Idaho boy in college, and after following him around the country for graduate school and rotations, they settled in Idaho. Lena is known to say “If I can’t go back to North Dakota, I definitely prefer Idaho to the other options!”
After completing the Master Gardener program here in Bonneville county, Lena was ecstatic to find that there was a job opening in that very program. Lena works alongside Ron Patterson to run the Master Gardener program in Bonneville county, supervising and aiding in their volunteer work in the diagnostic clinic and many service opportunities in the community.
Lena is also working to complete the new and beautiful demonstration gardens directly south of the Extension Office where members of the community can learn gardening techniques, variety selection for our area, and general gardening tips. She very much looks forward to the prospect of expanding these educational and research opportunities to a possible arboretum on the fair grounds.
Lena and Ron have worked tirelessly to create a horticulture website available to the public for all of University of Idaho Extension. She has spent hours sifting through University of Idaho relics as well as researching new materials that are best suited to teach Idahoans the best way to garden in their back yards. Along the way, they have worked together to create some new publications that, when completed, will offer information specifically to Idaho climate and soils unavailable until now.
This has also bled into creating an entirely online Master Gardener program that is accessible to anyone in the state of Idaho wishing to complete the Master Gardener program or continue on as an Advanced or Veteran Master Gardener.
Lena loves anything to do with plants and loves to share her passion and knowledge with others. Her favorite flower is Kniphofia or the red hot stove poker and she especially loves growing new varieties of peppers in her garden and carnivorous plants indoors.