Home & Garden Information Center

Clemson Extension Home & Garden Information Center

HGIC 9999

Clemson Extension is providing thousands of consumers more information than ever before through the Home & Garden Information Center (HGIC) which delivers information to the residents of South Carolina via a toll‑free phone call (1-888-656-9988) through an interactive voice response (IVR) system and a web site. Nearly 600 recorded messages on landscaping, gardening, plant health, household pests, food safety & preservation, and nutrition, diet & health are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Callers use a four-digit code published in the Home & Garden Information Center User’s Guide (EC 700) to retrieve the message they wish to hear.  If a caller does not have a copy of the User’s Guide, he/she can request one via surface mail or fax, or find it on the Center’s web site. The guide is also available from county Extension offices.  Callers can also proceed through a menu system to access some of the messages without having access to the User’s Guide.

There are 23 telephone lines into the IVR system to listen to recorded messages. From 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM Monday through Friday (except university holidays), there will be up to five more telephone lines open to Information Specialists who are available to speak with consumers to answer questions not covered by the recorded messages. The Information Specialists all hold either B.S., M.S., or Ph.D. degrees in horticulture, plant pathology, or food science, and receive additional training throughout the year.  An Information Assistant is also available to take orders for the nearly 500 fact sheets the Center produced that can be sent by surface mail (orders limited to five fact sheets per call).  Callers who access the Center at other times may receive fact sheets by fax through the IVR system.  The Center also maintains a web site containing all of the fact sheets in both PDF and HTML formats.

In 2006, the HGIC received over 23,000 calls to the toll-free number from South Carolina residents. The HGIC web site was used by over 6 million visitors accounting for over 16.3 million hits. Visitors from over 220 countries utilized the HGIC web site.

The Home & Garden Information Center is designed to complement Clemson’s network of professionals and volunteers by answering the routine types of calls and thereby free agents to deal with commercial agriculture/horticulture questions and conduct proactive programming to larger audiences.

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Prepared by James H. Blake, HGIC Director/Adjunct Professor, Clemson University. (New 06/02. Revised 01/07.)

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