Elizabeth Stanley will be the featured speaker at the April 9 meeting of the Boothbay Region Garden Club.

Stanley coordinates adult and youth gardening programs for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension in Knox, Lincoln and Waldo counties. Her main focus is administering the master gardener volunteer program training. Two hundred and twenty-five active volunteers work in school and community gardens, grow food for the needy, participate in civic beautification and give their time to other environmental projects.

Stanley moved to Maine in 1985 from Providence, R.I. where she attended Rhode Island School of Design then worked in product development and art directing for 20 years. She took the master gardener volunteer program in 2001 and later began working for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.

Her love of gardening is lifelong, but the master gardener volunteer course introduced her to the science of how plants work and the importance of soil health. Credit also goes to her parents who were both great gardeners and cooks. They always had beautiful flower and vegetable gardens wherever they lived: Ithaca, New York, the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Chicago and then Boston.

Now she has her own gardens and helps clients with their home and school gardening questions (more than 600 in 2013). She also works seasonally for Lee Schneller Fine Gardens, where she is continually learning.

Stanley lives with her husband in Warren, growing vegetables, fruit, trees, flowers, and a teenager.

Preceding the regular meeting of the Boothbay Region Garden Club at 1 p.m. at St Columba’s Church, club Historian Margaret Holden will give an enlightening talk about the history of our club. Holden will speak at noon. Everyone interested in gardening and related subjects is invited to attend the club’s meetings.