By Laura Kroeger
NKyTribune staff writer
As a girl, Northern Kentucky native Sue Sturgeon admired her father’s beautiful garden of roses and luscious tomatoes. But it wasn’t enough to put her on the path to horticulture–yet. She graduated from Thomas More University, lived in Park Hills with a small garden and enjoyed a satisfying career in market research for P&G. It was during her final years with the company that she served in Japan.
“I didn’t have space for a garden in Japan and realized it was something I greatly missed. I think that’s what led me to my interest in gardening today,” she muses.
“When you get to retirement, you choose what you want to be,” she explains. “When I ‘graduated’ from my career at P&G I was drawn to the Master Gardener Program offered by UK Extension.”
This designation is earned by completing an intensive 13-week program in horticulture training offered by the UK Cooperative Extension. Topics include botany, soil science, plant diseases and insect identification, and includes a requirement of community service in horticulture activities. For 13 years, this was heading the team of Master Gardeners who were dedicated to beautifying the Purple People Bridge following its debut in 2003.
Sue also serves on the CEC (Cooperative Extension Council) and Horticulture Advisory Team in Kenton County. She gets excited when she talks about all of the programs Extension offers: 4-H Youth Development, Agriculture, an Environmental Education Center, Family and Consumer Sciences, Horticulture, Community and Economic Development and Natural Resources.
For the past 24 years Sue has volunteered at the Civic Garden Center of Greater Cincinnati. At the end of 2025 she concludes her six-year term as president of the CGC Board of Directors. She will continue to volunteer at CGC serving as treasurer and presiding over finance. For 12 of those years at CGC, Sue was Chair of the Annual Plant Sale in May, their largest fundraiser. That sale is famous for the wide variety of herbs, among the thousands of plants available to purchase, many exclusive to the CGC sale.
The Edgewood resident also gets excited about urban gardening. The Riddle-Yates Community Garden in Covington is one of the 60 community gardens that the Civic Garden Center mentors. These gardens are managed by folks in the neighborhood who have taken the free community Garden Training Classes offered for almost 50 years at CGC. It’s just one of the many CGC programs that teach people from two to 92 how to garden sustainably.
Her other love is her family. Sue has a son in Florida, daughter in Louisville and two grandchildren.
As for retirement, it’s not on her radar.
“There are too many opportunities out there to grow what we can eat and enjoy, for the good of the Earth.”