New Name for the Garden Writers Association

With the coming of the New Year, the Garden Writers Association (GWA) has taken advantage of its 70^th anniversary to update its name. It is now Garden Communicators International and will be known as GardenComm.

This name change has been a long time coming.

It’s been apparent for years that the name “garden writers” simply didn’t cover it all. Many of its members are photographers, artists, lecturers, garden tour hosts, horticultural consultants, podcasters, PR people for public gardens and the horticultural industry or work on radio or television. All do reach out to gardeners to share information, but they don’t all write. Even garden bloggers—and there are many of us!—often don’t, for some reason, seem to consider themselves writers. So, a more comprehensive name was needed … a name like Garden Communicators International, GardenComm for short. Because all of us (yes, I’m a member!) communicate about gardens and gardening. It’s what we do and it’s what brings us together!

I’ve been a GWA member for over 30 years. In fact, I’m a past president of the association and have held all sorts of offices within GWA over the decades, including chairing the Local Arrangements Committee for the Quebec City symposium in 2013.

I can still recall how surprised I was to learn there was actually an organization for people like myself who made their living communicating about gardening. I was, in 1983, just starting my career, writing freelance about my passion for gardening for a newspaper and a few magazines and beginning to give lectures. I had no idea what I was really doing and whether you could actually make a decent living at it (I certainly wasn’t at that point). Then, while I was in Miami for the World Orchid Conference, I heard that there was a “Garden Writers Association of America” meeting in the hotel just across the street, so I wandered over … and met the friendliest people I’d ever run into to in my life. They just welcomed me in (well, I did have to pay admission, of course!) and presented me around. To my astonishment, I found myself hobnobbing with famous authors (well, famous in the gardening world) who treated me like I was one of them! And, I now realize, I was!

I ended up skipping the rest of the orchid show and spending the final part of my trip attending outstanding lectures, visiting extraordinary gardens and simply socializing with this new group of like-minded people (we’d call that networking today). I was hooked!

It was thanks to GWA that I got my first book contract, that I learned how to put together a decent PowerPoint presentation, that I learned the tricks of the trade of being a garden speaker, that I was able to pick up the latest gardening news and trends and that I simply developed the reassurance that what I dreamed of doing—making sharing my passion for gardening my life’s work—was indeed a viable way of life. And every year I attend the annual conference and exposition, wherever it takes place (it will be in Salt Lake City in 2019!), to reconnect with old friends, meet new ones, pick up new information and visit exclusive gardens. I owe GWA—now GardenComm—all my gratitude.

Are you a garden communicator? Do you blog, write about gardening for a local paper, share information about gardening in other ways? Why not consider joining GardenComm? At $105 US for a year’s membership, that’s a whole lot less than just about any other professional organization (indeed, I spend more every year on seeds!) and you certainly get your money’s worth. And tell them the Laidback Gardener sent you, for…

I am GardenComm!

Larry Hodgson