Now in its ninth year, the Spring Gardening Seminar seems to have become as much as herald of clement weather as the proverbial first robin of the season.

		REGISTRATION The Spring Gardening Seminar will be held Saturday. Cost is $10 per person. Call 724-228-6881.

Each year, the seminar draws between 200 and 250 participants. Registration for the seminars at Trinity Middle School in Washington begins at 8:15 a.m, and a keynote address by Arthur DeMeo, landscape specialist at the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, will follow at 8:45 a.m.

With a degree in arbor culture from Unity College, DeMeo later interned at an arboretum on Long Island, N.Y. After taking a number of greenhouse growing positions in New York and Pennsylvania, he became the assistant to the director for horticulture at the Bryant Park Restoration Corp. in midtown Manhattan. A stint as head coordinator for the 34th Street Partnership, a business improvement district in Manhattan, followed.

"For the past year, I've been a landscaping services specialist with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy," DeMeo said. "My keynote talk will focus on the conservancy and its role in community and resource conservation."

After DeMeo's talk, participants will be able to attend two of eight workshops, for which preregistration is recommended. Starting in the fall and continuing throughout the winter, Lee Young, county extension director, meets with Washington County's 35 active master gardeners to plan the topics for the subsequent year's workshops.

"We try for a wide range of choices that include vegetable growing, perennial bulbs, herbs and landscaping to give people the tools they need to get started in gardening and to discover new horticultural ideas," Young said. "At each annual seminar, we also canvas participants as to what they'd like to learn about next time around."

One of their suggestions that found its way into this year's slate of workshops will be featured in a talk by landscaper Andrea Tomsic titled "Steep Banks -- A Landscape Nightmare." Because of Washington County's abundance of hills and rolling terrain, Tomsic will tackle the problem of landscaping steep inclines by suggesting what to do and what not to do to make them stable, easy to maintain and attractive.

Another workshop titled "The Apothecary Garden" grew out of a collaboration between master gardeners, a Trinity Episcopal Church youth group and the Washington County Tourist Promotion Agency. As part of the project, the youth group has researched the herbs that were grown by physicians in the early 1800s to treat their patients. As a result, a model of a typical apothecary garden eventually will be installed next to the tourist promotion agency on Main Street.

Another workshop titled "Birdscaping" will be conducted by local realtor and master gardener Don York.

"Starting in 1991, I began planting flowers, shrubs, and trees that provide food, water, and shelter for birds and butterflies," York said. "My goal was to obtain a Backyard Wildlife Habitat certificate from the National Wildlife Federation. It took me three years to grow enough plants to obtain this designation."

Other workshops include "Choosing the Right Landscape Plants" by Arthur DeMeo, "Home Composting" by Camille Dzierski and Maryjo Niverth, "A Cycle of Herbs" by Lisa Kennedy, "Perennial Bulbs" by Carol Doman and "Those Vine Vegetables" by Alan Popey.