Garden Club Tributes

A Special Thanks To Master Gardener, Jim Pester

Look in the gardens and you are likely to find Jim Pester there. He is part of the long line of expert gardeners who have volunteered time and backbones to keep Alice’s farmhouse gardens in order.

Ask him why he tends the gardens and he will tell you…it’s the serenity of the place. It is the quiet and the spring bloom on the dogwood trees. The view is big from the hilltop. Clouds push across the river on the breeze.

Jim first connected to the Foundation when his daughter, now 35, was a child in the overnight nature program. After that, he and his wife stayed in touch by attending Oktoberfest every year. Then about three years ago, Jim retired “for good”. Fifteen years earlier, he retired from the Navy after a career as an intelligence officer, going on to a second career as a software engineer with Oracle.

Little did he know the gardens would become an avocation, a third act in his work life. When he saw an ad in the paper for volunteers at the Foundation, he answered it. He soon after became a Master Gardener in Charles County. These skilled gardeners have gone through intensive training on the A to Z of gardening, and provide community service and improve their gardening knowledge each year to retain their certification.

Jim is an avid gardener at his home in Waldorf, too. He started a wildflower garden on the site of an old vegetable garden. Under his picture window, Knock-out roses catch the eye. Coneflowers and Black-eyed Susan are among his favorite flowers.

Jim’s garden advice: Mulch everything to keep down the weeds!