As I drove home from presenting a talk to a delightful garden club near Boston, I reflected on the fact that most such groups I speak to are composed of members who are over fifty. I’m not the first to propose that if such groups don’t change pretty soon, many will cease to exist in the next twenty years. This would be a shame, of course, because garden clubs do so much good for individuals and their communities.

So I propose that it’s time for:

The 21^st Century Garden Club

The 21^st Century Garden Club is half virtual. Many meetings take place on-line. There is ongoing sharing of information through the groups own FB group or email listserv. Questions are asked or comments are posted, and people converse about the topics as they have time or interest. This allows members who aren’t free to go to an actual meeting during the day or in the evening to participate in the hours when they are available.

There are twitter meetings where a group “gathers” on a particular night for an hour to tweet about a specified subject. One night a month the flower arrangers might be sharing tips while on another night the houseplant lovers are tweeting.

The 21^st CGC has it’s own Pinterest account where members post photos. Some of the club’s boards are photos of their projects such as the local children’s and school gardens they facilitate and hort-therapy projects they’ve done at local assisted living facilities. Other boards are of member’s flower arrangements and the gardens they maintain in traffic triangles or in front of local libraries. And many members keep individual boards to show photos of their plants and gardens.

The 21^st CGC conducts most of the business meetings online so no actual meeting time needs to be spent on such details. Minutes of meetings, face-to-face and virtual, are posted online, and sign-up sheets for upcoming luncheons, fieldtrips or workshops are done on the club’s FaceBook group page. Votes are taken through SurveyMonkey or with other online polling software. Since the business is all done ahead of time members have more time to talk and enjoy the speaker.

Some 21^st Century Garden Clubs choose to spend all of their actual meeting time in gardens. Others hold workshops and donate their time to community efforts in the ways that such groups have done for decades.

Because the 21^st CGC is so flexible, it can include people of all ages, those who work full time, members who are housebound, and even former-members who’ve moved out of the area. This new style of garden club is even better able to create a community, and to share the members’ love of plants and gardening, because through technology they can be so inclusive.

Who’s up for cultivating Garden Clubs for the 21^st Century?