By Kyle LoJacono
Pasco Extension Director and horticulture agent B.J. Jarvis has lived in the county for 20 years, but she still remembers having to change the way she thinks about growing plants.
“I grew up in Ohio and I had to reprogram my mind,” Jarvis said. “The seasons are all different. Growing up in the Midwest I would look at catalogs in January and you had a few months to prepare. You didn’t start planting until May. Here if you wait until May it’s too late. You need to look at the time that’s the harshest, which is the winter up North and the summer here.”

Another challenge of being the only horticulture agent in the county is the wide variations of climate from east to west Pasco.
“There is a tremendous microclimates in Pasco County,” Jarvis said. “In Dade City we have a lot of hills and it gets colder. It stays warmer in Land O’ Lakes and central Pasco. So when someone calls, I always ask where are they from. It makes a big difference and unfortunately, not everything is going to do well in our different climates.”
Jarvis has been working with the Pasco extension office for five years. Her passion for horticulture began after a childhood trip to the Cincinnati Zoo.
“I went to a really cool program in high school and we got to plant landscapes and find out which ones could go with the animals,” Jarvis said. “That’s when my love of plants and growing things started. I never could decide to go to the plant or animal side of the natural world, so when I went to college at Ohio State University I did both.”
Jarvis graduated from Ohio State in 1982 and has spent the last 30 years working in horticulture. She worked at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden before coming to Pasco. Her first job in Florida was with the Southwest Florida Water Management District.
“At that time they were starting water restrictions,” Jarvis said. “They didn’t have a horticulturist to make sure what they were mandating would work. I was there for 15 years, but one day I realized I never got to go outside and grow plants and talk to people about them. I heard they were looking for someone in Pasco, and it was the perfect opportunity.”
It is that teaching that keeps Jarvis at her post.
“What really keeps me going is the aha moment,” Jarvis said. “I’ll describe something to someone and they’ll say ‘yes that’s it,’ or you tell someone what to do to fix a problem and it makes sense to them.”
Jarvis is passionate about growing plants, but she is not interested in spending all day with finicky ones.
“I call myself a lazy gardener,” Jarvis said. “There are enough plants that will flourish without a lot of fuss. I do like some high-maintenance plants like roses, but I don’t have a whole bunch of them. I think people over manage a lot of the time and that hurts plants. Often the answer is just stop causing harm and let the plant grow.”
She does get a certain kind of satisfaction from weeding, a chore for most gardeners.
“I find weeding to be very therapeutic,” Jarvis said. “It doesn’t take a lot of mind power and it doesn’t matter if you spend a lot or little time because you made some improvement. I tell my husband sometimes I have to go weeding, and he understands I just need some time. I come back and I’m always in a better mood.”
Jarvis said most of the calls she gets have to do with a bug or disease in plants. She said the mild winters prevent large number of bugs from being killed, and the hot and humid summers are just what diseases need to spread. However, she believes the major problem with most landscaping is too much watering.
“When I moved here only 25 percent of people had irrigation systems and today 75 percent do,” Jarvis said. “One of the biggest problems in their landscape is too much water. Not too little. The stress of too much water attracts bugs, so it’s a double whammy. People see the plant dropping and having problems and they think it needs more water. Over watering is probably the biggest issue people have.”
Jarvis, her husband Randy and their two children, Tory and Craig, live in San Antonio. Tory, a senior at Pasco High, was the grand champion for her azaleas presented at the Pasco Fair in February. Craig, a student at Pasco Middle, also entered several plants in the event.
“I was a very proud mother,” Jarvis said.
For more information on the Extension, call (352) 518-0231, email Jarvis at or visit pasco.ifas.ufl.edu.
Jarvis column wins state award
Pasco Extension Director and horticulture agent B.J. Jarvis has been writing columns for The Laker and the Lutz News every other week for about a year. Her work was named the best column done by a horticulture agent in Florida. She heard about the honor on April 8.
“It was great because it’s something I love to do and I got recognized for it,” Jarvis said. “Horticulture agents got to send in some examples and now I move on to the regional competition. It’s nice to know people enjoy what you’ve done.”
Origins of Cooperative Extension
The United States Department of Agriculture records that the first semblance of the current Cooperative Extension service goes back to 1862.
That is when The Morrill Act, “established land-grant universities to educate citizens in agriculture, home economics, mechanical arts and other practical professions,” according to the departments website www.csrees.usda.gov/index.html.
The idea of the Extension was formalized in 1914 to help spread knowledge gained at universities to farmers to better feed the country.
“The idea was the farmers had questions and the universities had answers and that’s how the name Extension started,” said B.J. Jarvis, Pasco’s Extension director. “The mission is a little different now. It’s more for citizens with questions, but the idea is the same.
“The cool thing about Extension services is it can be customized for the area,” Jarvis continued. “Issues here are a lot different than Miami. Some places have a marine agent, some might have more horticulture agents.”
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