18 Jul 2026 Person of the Month: Robin Trent
Hometown: I’m a Conway native — born, raised and currently residing in Conway!
Family: My husband, Tyler, and our dog and cat, Otto and Rip Anthony, respectively.
Education: I graduated from Greenbrier High School in 2005 and attended college at the University of Central Arkansas, graduating with a Bachelor of Business Administration in 2009.
Community activities: I’ve been serving the community as a Faulkner County Master Gardener (FCMG) since 2020.
Work: I work as a full-time manager at Maurices here in Conway. This past May marked my 21-year anniversary with Maurices.
Accomplishments: While working at Maurices, I’ve earned district and regional sales performance awards, but my most meaningful accomplishments are Faulkner County Master Gardener honors. In 2021, I was named FCMG’s Rookie of the Year. This past March, I was honored to have earned the Faulkner County Master Gardener of the Year award. In June, I was awarded the Arkansas State Master Gardener of the Year award. I have held positions on the FCMG board since 2024 and am serving as FCMG president this year.
Why Master Gardeners? A big reason behind signing up was a need for personal enrichment. After 20+ years at Maurices, I realized that opportunities for further growth were limited unless I stepped into a store leader position, which I wasn’t interested in. So I started looking for growth opportunities outside of work. My hobbies and interests led me to the MG program. I had seen a FCMG recruitment posting that read, “Play in the dirt with friends! Train to be a Master Gardener,” and I thought, “That looks like a good fit for me, I’m going to be a Master Gardener!”
How was the State Conference?I served as the chairperson for the Master Gardener State Conference Garden Tours Committee. Tours of local gardens were offered to conference attendees as part of the state conference package. During the conference, we FCMGs were doing a little bit of everything! I continued working with the Garden Tours Committee, set and cleared tables during meals, worked with the decoration team and worked as a floating volunteer. Suffice it to say, FCMG volunteers should’ve brought our sleeping bags to the expo center because we LIVED there during the MG State Conference.
Community pet project? I enjoy volunteering at all of our FCMG Project Gardens, but the Faulkner County Museum Gardens have my heart! I have volunteered with the Museum Gardens Committee since becoming a MG in 2020, serving as chairperson in 2024 and 2025 and co-chairing this year. The mission of the Museum Gardens is to provide an outdoor educational space — a living classroom! The gardens feature a blend of historic plantings, an herb garden, drought-tolerant natives, and bird-friendly plantings.
Three favorite plants? Only three?! That’s no fun! Rattlesnake master is a definite favorite! It’s native to Arkansas, pollinators love it, and it has quite the whimsical-looking blooms. We have rattlesnake master growing in several of our FCMG project gardens. Zinnias will always hold a special place in my heart; they are the flowers of my childhood. Growing up, Momma and Daddy grew a bed of zinnias every summer, and Momma always kept a sweet little bouquet of her cut zinnias on the kitchen table. Going over to Momma’s and Daddy’s during the summer as an adult is much the same (as far as zinnias go, at least). My favorite tree earns the last spot: the wild honey locust! The trunk of a wild honey locust is covered in extremely sharp, absolutely LETHAL-looking thorns. It is thought that the thorns are an evolutionary adaptation stemming from a time when megafauna roamed the earth — built-in protection to keep giant ground sloths and the like from destroying branches, or the whole tree for that matter, while they fed on bark and branches.
