Home Care In Boulder, CO

The Boulder County Extension has had a Master Gardener program for 51 years — one of the first in Colorado — founded in 1975 by Horticultural Agent Barbara Hyde. For 41 of those years, I’ve been privileged to serve as a volunteer, one of the most rewarding and engaging experiences to which I look forward every season.

Over 1,200 Master Gardeners have been trained in the county over the program’s history, with about 100 currently active, who in 2025 provided 3,620 hours of volunteer service to at least 4,000 home gardeners (not only property owners but also apartment or condominium occupants who plant in containers or community gardens).

The purpose of the program is to educate and assist home gardeners with resources to answer gardening questions. It currently trains an average of 10 to 20 new MGs each year with a curriculum developed by Colorado State University. Each year MGs are required to provide many hours of volunteer service and take educational courses.

Among the volunteer opportunities, MGs staff tables at garden centers like Ace Hardware, Jax and farmers markets during the growing season, respond to phone inquiries all year, and participate in specially trained teams. The tree team makes site visits to assess tree problems, the diagnostic team on which I serve evaluates plant samples brought to the extension office, and a new team is being formed to conduct site visits to diagnose turf problems.

This year Master Gardeners also have helped childcare centers plant gardens through the Farm-To-Early-Care-and-Education program, distributed over 5,000 native plant seedlings to the public as part of its Sustainable Landscaping initiative, and provided community-wide education about invasive species like emerald ash borer, Japanese beetle and the Asian jumping worm. The Food Pantry Garden donated over $2,500 worth of food to local food banks. MGs have created and continue to maintain demonstration gardens at the Extension office and the Native Plants Demo Garden at the Longmont Public Media building that help gardeners create environmentally sustainable plantings.

MGs provide this service based on their training and experience, and professional horticulture and small acreage staff oversee their work. The logistics of arranging for the various volunteer activities and assuring they are fulfilled (in addition to managing the annual training of new recruits) is a vital administrative role of the Master Gardener coordinator.

While there is a lot of gardening information online, including science-based CSU materials, web resources and AI cannot provide sufficient or fully accurate information for all gardening questions that address our local environmental conditions. In fact, web-based information can be misleading or false. We often hear from gardeners with lawn problems, for example, that they “diagnosed” the situation as insects or disease (rather than the more common irrigation issues) and applied pesticides — useless, wasteful and often environmentally harmful. There is no substitute for local volunteers trained to answer home gardener questions along with professional Extension staff. Our training includes not only the latest science-based horticultural information but also how best to communicate that knowledge in a way that gardeners can understand and utilize with sensitivity to their individual situations.

In short, therefore, besides helping with vegetables (including food for those in need) and home and community flower gardens, the Extension diagnoses landscape diseases, insects and environmental problems, promotes water-saving landscapes, provides early detection of newly invasive pests, diseases and plants, and is actively involved in preserving the county’s urban forests (which assist carbon sequestration, wildlife habitat and environmental cooling). MGs provide these services by translating university research into practical, neighbor-to-neighbor education.

It has been a privilege to provide this service — a continuing education for myself and a joy to share knowledge with gardeners who always express gratitude for our help.

While I fully appreciate the county’s severe budget problem and that hard choices must be made, I urge the commissioners not to cut the home horticulture staff, master gardener coordinator and small acreage specialist.

I hope that Boulder County residents who’ve benefited from our help over the decades will tell the commissioners how much they value this service – either via email ([email protected]) or at the Oct. 22 public hearing on the county budget.

Patricia Butler of Boulder is a longtime volunteer with the Master Gardener program.

and last updated 4:34 PM, Oct 05, 2026

BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. — Two people were found dead at a crash site south of Boulder Monday morning following an extensive search and rescue operation involving dozens of crews after a plane was last spotted by radar in the Eldorado Springs area Sunday evening.

During a news conference Monday morning, county sheriff officials said they received a report of the possible downed aircraft at 9:42 p.m. on Sunday from the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center.

"At that point in time, rescuers were sent out to try to locate the possible crash site. They've been doing that overnight, and again, they just restarted that effort again just a little while ago," said Boulder County Sheriff's Office spokesman Vinnie Montez earlier in the day.

Boulder County provided an update later in the day about the crash. Watch it in the video below:

The missing plane — a private, single-engine fixed-wing aircraft — flew out of Longmont Airport, Montez said, though information about where the plane was headed or details about its tail number were not immediately available.

At around 10:15 a.m., a MedEvac helicopter and the Civil Air Patrol found the crash site of the missing aircraft north of Eldorado Canyon State Park and south of the Flatirons, deputies said in a news release later Monday. Rescuers reached the crash site at around noon.

"Two individuals were located deceased, and no survivors were found," deputies said.

Montez said a temporary flight restriction was in effect for that area, and those restrictions were expected to be lifted sometime Tuesday.

"We just want to ask the public: Please don't come into the area around El Dorado Springs or in the areas that I've previously described and fly any personal aviation aircraft or drones," he said. "It will jeopardize any other operations that are going with our drone operations in the area."

Watch Monday's earlier news conference from the Boulder County Sheriff's Office in the video below:

The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office, in coordination with the National Transportation Safety Board, will be conducting the investigation which will be led by the NTSB, deputies said.

The Boulder County Coroner’s Office is also conducting an independent investigation to determine the cause and manner of death of the two individuals. Their names will be released following positive identification and notification to family members, deputies said.

Besides the sheriff’s office, Boulder County Emergency Services, Rocky Mountain rescue, Boulder Open Space & Mountain Parks Rangers, Colorado Search and Rescue association, medevac, and civil air patrol are all included in the search and rescue operation, Montez said.

Two people were found dead in the wreckage of a single-engine plane that crashed Sunday evening in Boulder County.

The wreckage, from a plane identified by the Federal Aviation Administration as a Diamond DA40, crashed around 9:30 p.m. Sunday about four miles west of Mountain View Fire Rescue Station 9, 4390 Eldorado Springs Drive.

Boulder County Sheriff’s officials learned about the crash at 9:42 p.m. from an alert from the U.S. Air Force Rescue Coordination Center, Boulder County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Vinnie Montez said during a Monday morning news conference. Crews found the wreckage about 10:15 a.m. Monday, according to a Sheriff’s Office post on X.

When crews got to the crash site about noon, they did not find any survivors, the post says. The Boulder County Coroner will identify the victims and specify the cause and manner of their deaths once their families have been notified. One family member related to one of the victims has been speaking with officials, Montez said.

He said no fire was reported at the crash site.

Montez said the plane departed from Longmont’s Vance Brand Airport on Sunday evening, but he couldn’t say where it was headed because private planes don’t have to file flight plans. He also did not know what time the plane took off Sunday evening.

Clear skies and calm winds helped with the search effort, which began Sunday night and continued Monday morning after an overnight break, Montez said.

Responders had to be meticulous in their search because tree cover is dense enough in some areas that the ground isn’t visible from search-and-rescue aircraft, Montez said.

Civil Air Patrol and MedEvac air crews first identified the wreckage, Montez said.

“The area is rugged, the terrain is definitely difficult up in that area, and it took until approximately noon for responders from Rocky Mountain Rescue (Group), Boulder Emergency Squad, Boulder Mountain Parks and Open Space and other crews to get up to the scene,” said Montez, who added that a team from the National Transportation Safety Board will arrive on the scene on Tuesday and lead the investigation.

Once the wreckage was identified, Montez said crews approached the site on foot.

“There’s no immediate trails up to it or anything like that from what I could see. The terrain, the elevation, the incline, to me, it looks like it’s pretty difficult,” said Montez, who said he reviewed images from the scene.

He later said that the search and rescue efforts took time because “you want to do it safely. It doesn’t help if we get somebody injured.”

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the circumstances of the crash starting Tuesday, according to the Sheriff’s Office post. The NTSB will have a team on scene on Tuesday, Montez said.

A flight restriction is in place around the scene until around 10:15 a.m. Tuesday, Montez said.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

Political party: Democrat

Website: votekayce.com

Autobiographical statement: My career in land surveying spans more than 20 years, rooted in a commitment to quality work in Boulder County and throughout the state. Over the years, I have built strong working relationships with fellow surveyors and clients across the community. I have taken on leadership roles within the profession at both the state and national levels, including service with DORA, PLSC and as Colorado’s delegate to NCEES, where I also write licensing exam questions for aspiring surveyors nationwide. I am running for Boulder County surveyor to protect survey monuments, safeguard our land records and serve as a trusted resource for our community.

What would your priority be as surveyor, and how would you accomplish it?: ?As county surveyor, my top priority would be protecting critical survey monuments from destruction or obliteration during construction and development. These monuments are the physical evidence defining property boundaries and public land survey corners, and their loss creates uncertainty for property owners, increases public costs, and makes it far more difficult to accurately restore those positions in the future. Protecting this framework is central to the stewardship responsibility of the county surveyor.

To accomplish this, I would draw on my technical background, having spent more than 20 years in the surveying profession, including hands-on fieldwork, boundary determinations and control network development, much of it here in Boulder County. This experience gives me a practical understanding of where monuments are most vulnerable during construction and how to prevent that loss before it happens. I would also work with Boulder County and local jurisdictions to review some existing guidance and requirements, since certain provisions conflict with state statutes and bylaws. Through open communication, I believe we can establish clearer, more consistent guidance that better protects monuments during development and permitting review.

In addition, I would serve as a technical resource for the public, Boulder County staff, and elected officials, helping interpret survey records, clarify boundary and monumentation issues, and answer questions during land use, permitting and infrastructure decisions. By staying accessible and building strong relationships across departments, I can help staff and officials make informed decisions grounded in sound surveying principles, while giving property owners a trusted point of contact for boundary-related concerns. Finally, I would use my experience on the Colorado State Board of Licensure, including two terms as board chair, to educate developers, contractors and engineers on the importance of monument preservation. Together, these efforts would meaningfully reduce monument loss and strengthen the integrity of Boulder County’s land records.

Political party: Democrat

Website: votekayce.com

Autobiographical statement: My career in land surveying spans more than 20 years, rooted in a commitment to quality work in Boulder County and throughout the state. Over the years, I have built strong working relationships with fellow surveyors and clients across the community. I have taken on leadership roles within the profession at both the state and national levels, including service with DORA, PLSC and as Colorado’s delegate to NCEES, where I also write licensing exam questions for aspiring surveyors nationwide. I am running for Boulder County surveyor to protect survey monuments, safeguard our land records and serve as a trusted resource for our community.

What would your priority be as surveyor, and how would you accomplish it?: ?As county surveyor, my top priority would be protecting critical survey monuments from destruction or obliteration during construction and development. These monuments are the physical evidence defining property boundaries and public land survey corners, and their loss creates uncertainty for property owners, increases public costs, and makes it far more difficult to accurately restore those positions in the future. Protecting this framework is central to the stewardship responsibility of the county surveyor.

To accomplish this, I would draw on my technical background, having spent more than 20 years in the surveying profession, including hands-on fieldwork, boundary determinations and control network development, much of it here in Boulder County. This experience gives me a practical understanding of where monuments are most vulnerable during construction and how to prevent that loss before it happens. I would also work with Boulder County and local jurisdictions to review some existing guidance and requirements, since certain provisions conflict with state statutes and bylaws. Through open communication, I believe we can establish clearer, more consistent guidance that better protects monuments during development and permitting review.

In addition, I would serve as a technical resource for the public, Boulder County staff, and elected officials, helping interpret survey records, clarify boundary and monumentation issues, and answer questions during land use, permitting and infrastructure decisions. By staying accessible and building strong relationships across departments, I can help staff and officials make informed decisions grounded in sound surveying principles, while giving property owners a trusted point of contact for boundary-related concerns. Finally, I would use my experience on the Colorado State Board of Licensure, including two terms as board chair, to educate developers, contractors and engineers on the importance of monument preservation. Together, these efforts would meaningfully reduce monument loss and strengthen the integrity of Boulder County’s land records.