In our small community, Woodlake Botanical Gardens nearly became a town park.
Too much reliance on volunteer help, the finances of a small town, and the energy and amazing capacity of two people screeched to a halt at the end of June. Either the city had to take over the care of the gardens, or increase their spending to include paid help. The load was too much to bear alone. Too many disappointments when funds didn’t come through frazzled nerves and maybe a few tempers.
But the love of their gardens never wavered.
Agronomist for U.C. Davis and his wife, Manuel and Olga Jimenez, have given their time for the past 14 years. Modestly their donated time has been worth $2,310,000, or about $165,000 per year. That doesn’t include the donated plant materials and infrastructure.
Would the Community Step Up?
Today was the culmination of a month of planning.
So, Manuel and Olga invited Proteus and me to help them plan a meeting to see what kinds of support might be out there. We invited about 75 people from service organizations, educational and government services to attend a brainstorming session. Thirty-nine reserved, and fifty came.
Fifty influencers in Tulare County gathered at Woodlake Presbyterian Church to brainstorm ways to raise $250,000 this year to support the Woodlake Botanical Gardens.
Wow! Even to put that much money on the screen scares me. Did you know that the San Francisco Botanical Gardens spend 5.5 billion dollars per year to maintain and grow the gardens?
That works out to $100,000 per acre. Woodlake has a unique 14 acre agricultural and rose and cacti garden valued at 500,000 in roses alone. If we maintained it to the same level as the SF garden, it would cost us 1,400,000 per year. That makes 250,000 seem paltry in comparison.
Our Agenda
- Our agenda included an opening walk around. Everyone wrote one or two things they love about the Gardens.
- Next, I gave a brief welcome, explained what in the world an educator/blogger was doing running a meeting about a botanical garden, and why we were there.
- We pre-selected four people to make presentations about the benefits of the gardens. The first speaker, Chuck House, from Sequoia Hills Stables focused on the value and work of raising roses. Carmita Peña discussed the educational value to the 25 student volunteers a year who earned community service hours in high school working in the gardens. A Boy Scout organizer for 75 years, Bob Ludekens also still runs a nursery business that has donated hundreds of trees to the gardens. He explained why fruit from the store doesn’t taste sweet, and the fruit in the Botanical Gardens does. Finally, a former journalist and now website designer and documentarian, Shirley Kirkpatrick explained why the Woodlake Botanical Gardens are a treasure. A tourist attraction nestled in the foothills of the Sequoia National Park, the park draws much interest to their website about Tulare County.
- Finally, the meat of the meeting, table group brainstorming, and presentations. WOW. You can tell the engagement level of your participants in the process by simply listening to the buzz in the room. Each presentation was carefully thought out and well presented. Very few left the room even though we met during working hours.
- We held the meeting to right at one hour as promised, and offered them a chance to go home, but no one did until the last presentation finished. We closed with commitment cards about 10 minutes after the designated closing time.
I remind myself of my mom! 🙂
Follow-up
As a volunteer administrator, I am going to be looking for money. Several in the group volunteered to help with grant and proposal writing. It was clear that the gardens needed exposure. Some volunteered to help with marketing.
Even a little garden presents a huge amount of work. Plants don’t stop needing attention while you’re working out the details of who is going to do the work.
Woodlake Botanical Gardens needs your help. Maybe you can donate funds. Someone suggested Fund me. So I’ll check into that. Maybe you love to weed roses. We need help with that now.
Manuel is writing out a calendar of events so we can figure out how to get volunteers in the short-term to do the gardening work until we raise money to hire full-time employees. Even though we get employees, it will not negate the need for volunteer help. So if you can help, please let me know.
I hope you don’t mind me writing about this on my blog. Right now, it’s where my mind and heart are. If I don’t write this, I won’t get much writing done.
Check into Always Write for my interviews coming up with author Sally Cronin, and social media guru, Chris Brogan. Today I am reposting a wonderful interview done by Norah Colvin with an author, Aleesah Darlinson. The topic of the interview caught my attention – the extinct Tasmanian tiger.
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Marsha Ingrao - Always Write 
22 responses to “How To Bring Together a Community to Support a Botanical Garden”
The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden burned in a 2009 fire, and the Ventura Botanic Garden was completely destroyed by one of the Los Angeles fires a couple of days ago.
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That’s so devastating and heartbreaking. It’s an amazing amount of work and financial support to create a garden and even more to keep it up! Our hearts go out to so many who have lost so much in these fires.
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Reblogged this on Woodlake Botanical Gardens and commented:
This is what happened at our first Planning Meeting of Stakeholders for the WBG.
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Marsha, you are so tireless in your efforts to bring your community together! Best wishes on the project!
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Thanks, there are new things happening every day.
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Keep at it! Great post!
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Wow! You ARE one busy lady! I hope you get the support you need for this wonderful project.
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Thanks, Michelle. It’s been an amazing labor of love on the part of Manuel and Olga Jimenez. Wish you could see it. 🙂
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Wonderful movement for the community Marsha. I will share this around for you. 🙂
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You are amazing, my friend. I also hope you will do an interview podcast with me. I did my first one yesterday with Sally, and I have one today with Chris Brogan. I’m getting a feel for who I am as a blogger – I think! 🙂
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Wow! I’d love to!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And where can I find the one with Sally??????????? 🙂
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I’m still working on it. I got a new microphone today to record the beginning and the end. Then I’ve got to find music and edit the recording we did by Skype. It was so much fun. I don’t know why I didn’t do more audio interviewing earlier. It’s so much fun talking to my friends. 🙂
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Wow, do keep us posted when it goes live. I’d love to watch it. 🙂
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You know I will. You better get ready for an interview next!!!! I got me a shiny new microphone and a plan of action! 🙂
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Best wishes to you and the community. I hope you get lots of local support for this project.
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Thanks, my friend. I’m hoping for larger than local. It’s been proposed that we need a starting fund of 2.5 million and a budget of about $200,000 per year. That’s going to take more than local dollars because we are a small and poor farming community. We have 100% of our families on free and reduced lunch. We have the highest teen pregnancy rate in Tulare County. So this project has to reach farther than our community. As we sit at the base and on the way to the Sequoia National Park, I’m hoping that help will come from far and wide. 🙂
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Good luck.
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Thanks! 🙂
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Marsha, gardening is very close to my heart and this is such an inspiring story. Congratulations to you all for giving back to the community and bringing the community together…. from little acorns!
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Thank you Paula and Russ. I appreciate your well wishes. I’ll be visiting your site very soon. 🙂
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Reblogged this on Smorgasbord – Variety is the spice of life and commented:
Marsha Ingrao has had a very busy week as the challenge continues to raise awareness and funds for the Woodlake Botanical Garden.. do you live in the area in California and can you help out in anyway by volunteering or fundraising. Even sharing this post will help by reaching as many people as possible, especially bloggers or influencers in the region. Do you know someone in a position to help.. a business or green organisation with regional support locally? Please help Marsha with this important project #California #Woodlake Botanical Garden.
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This is amazing! Thank you so much. What a beautiful introduction! I love the use of hashtags. I should have done/and will do that on the orignal post!
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