Meeting gardeners!

rainbowgardener · Tue Oct 13, 2015 3:30 pm

I moved to this area knowing no one. So besides attending my local Friends (Quaker) Meeting, I have been using MeetUp.com to start to meet people. I looked for a Chattanooga area Gardeners MeetUp and couldn't find one. So I started on. Very easy, if you don't mind coughing up the $50 they charge to start a new group. Just post it with info about your idea for the group, brief intro of yourself, etc.

I did that 10 days ago and my group now has 13 people signed up for it!

So now I'm trying to get an actual meeting time and place organized. The idea of MeetUp is to use the computer to bring people together in real life, not just on-line. I'm hoping for a get to know each other meeting early in Nov.

I'm really pleased to have so many people show interest. I often tell people it is nice they come here, but really they need to talk to actual gardeners in their location, that know their local plants and climate, etc. So here's one way to do it!

applestar · Tue Oct 13, 2015 4:35 pm

Wow that's pretty cool. Hope you meet up with some good people.

catgrass · Thu Oct 15, 2015 10:04 am

I belong to another site that is mostly southern gardeners and honestly, mostly La., Miss., Ala. , Tx gardeners with a few others thrown in. We meet every year in the middle of the state and everybody brings food and door prizes, we swap plants and seeds and stories. It is a lot of fun. Last year we had about 30 there, this year we're expecting 50-60. It should be a LOT of fun. Good luck with this!

imafan26 · Thu Oct 15, 2015 11:37 am

After you talked about meetup I looked for it and found a local group and some of the people I actually know.

Taiji · Thu Oct 15, 2015 11:57 pm

Welcome to zone 7b! (But I'm sure your 7b is a lot different than my 7b) You probably have something there called humidity!

rainbowgardener · Fri Oct 16, 2015 8:22 am

Imafan - terrific that you found a local group. Even though I spend a lot of time here, I am way more a fan of all the ways the computer can bring people together in real life and make valuable connections - MeetUp, craigslist, freecycle, dating sites, kickstarter, peer to peer lending, etc etc.

People sitting and typing are still alone (and surveys show still lonely) even if what they are typing is in forums, chat rooms,multiplayer gaming, cybersex, second life avatars, or whatever. All the screens are isolating and alienating us. But the digiverse can be useful to actually bring people together!

Taiji - yes my 7b landscape is VERY different from yours. We actually have less general humidity here than where I was before in 6a Ohio, in the sense of just haze, humid muggy air. But even more rain. Where I was we had 40 inches of rain/precipitation, pretty evenly distributed through the months. Here we have 50 inches of mostly rain (just a little snow) a little bit less evenly distributed. I know 50 inches is pretty inconceivable .....

incidentally my group is now up to 16 people. I scheduled a meeting for us for Nov5. Of course not all of the 16 will come, but should be enough to make it interesting....

imafan26 · Fri Oct 16, 2015 11:41 am

Sounds like fun.
I actually volunteer at two botanical gardens so I get a lot of my social outlet there. At the city botanical garden we used to do propagation, now it is mostly weeding. So, we look forward to lunch afterwards and people share their pictures of family and their trips to China, Japan, Spain, Korea, and Australia. I have been with that group since the 1980's.

I joined the university (state) owned botanical garden in 2008 and have been taking care of the herb garden there. There are around 70 people who regularly volunteer and 200+ on the volunteer list that work with different groups. Some for special projects and others have adopted areas of the garden. The rose garden is taken care of by the Honolulu Rose Society and the Pearl City Bonsai Club has just adopted a small area to display bonsai. The boy scouts, youth challenge, rotary club members have also done projects or come on planned work days. The volunteers in the garden are called the ohana (family). Mostly people who have adopted areas work on Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and most Saturdays (even though the garden is closed to the public on most Saturdays. ) Almost everybody also joins the Sprouts (propagation group) initially so, Thursdays the majority of the volunteers work with the sprouts and they come at another time to take care of their adopted area. The ohana has an annual (mostly) mochi pounding, annual volunteer day, scheduled workdays with lunch afterwards. Once a year we have an agricultural tour if someone can think of a place they would like to visit, and we go out to lunch for the Spring buffet at LCC community college nearby that runs a restaurant as part of their culinary program. Everyday, we share a break with snacks and sometimes we will have fruit from the orchard.

The other gardeners are also a wealth of information as everyone has their area of expetise and little helpful hints.
We have plant sales once a month and most of the plants are grown by the sprouts, or volunteers (I grow herbs along with someone else), other volunteers grow and donate other plants. Even the customers get in on it and donate pots and plants or seeds.

I also have a community garden as well but even though there are 600 gardeners there it is a different culture. Many diverse cultures and some of them speak little or no English and pretty much stick to themselves. We have an annual potluck designed to bring the gardeners together and we are allowed member trading so we have scheduled a couple of those to get people to bring in and share their plants and the things that they are growing in their gardens.

rainbowgardener · Sat Oct 17, 2015 9:44 am

very nice idea about volunteering at the botanical gardens. I will keep it in mind for spring.