Stephen Henning expounded:

Each state runs their master gardener programs differently. I am not a
master gardener, but know many and even tutored several who were
studying for the master gardner status. In our area the master
gardeners have a number of gardens they maintain for educational
purposes and for the local Penn State campus. They participate in lots
of actual gardening projects for local parks and provide demonstrations
for school children. They go on interesting field trips and have a lot
of information to share with each other. They tend to be cliquish and
identify with each other. They do not sit at tables and answer
questions. They include a cross section of our community including
teachers, nursery and garden center workers, and other gardeners. In
our area there is no waiting list to take classes and we get a lot of
people taking the classes.

The Master Gardener program run by the Massachusetts Horticultural
Society is a serious program too, Stephen, but many people get their
jollies out of ridiculing Master Gardeners. Not around here, they're
known as knowledable advisors, but somewhere they must not be very
effective to have earned this bad reputation.
--
Ann, gardening in Zone 6a
South of Boston, Massachusetts
e-mail address is not checked
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there are a lot of really well informed master gardeners in our world that is if we bother to go and ferrett them out for the answers we want.
here is one that i really enjoy watching on television i find him both entertaining and knowlegable.

http://mastergardener2005.usask.ca/p...-keynotes.html

there are also a few hotlines and radio programs that we have in our area which i am sure there are also in others that feature master gardeners that i also find very informative.
so i guess the old story stands that no matter what profession a person is in there is good and bad in all of them. sockiescat