Happy November! My five month sojourn at Meadowbrook in PA has ended as of this past weekend and I’m now living back home in Westminster. I feel lucky to have a piece of both worlds. There, I can let my dogs out and they can happily explore whatever they fancy while still remaining on our property. Here, I have to obey leash laws and make sure they don’t stray off our much smaller yard into the neighbor’s. In Westminster, I can easily get together with friends or pop over to Main Street or 140. In PA, I’m lucky if I even see the neighbor doing farm chores and have to drive 8-9 miles for decent shopping. I wish I had a transporter so I could easily step from one place to the other!
Our theme this year is “Getting to Know You”. People want to know about our new members and put names to faces more easily. So, I will resume “interviews” now that I am back with both new and longer term members for the blog. I also want to figure out who we are as a club and where we want to go. I think this information will also help any new officers in the future. Each garden club is unique in both its focus and history. The subtotal of the will of its members determines whether it becomes more social, educational or civic in nature– and that can change over time. What a club accomplishes can also be due to strong confident personalities who are good at convincing others to overcome natural inertia and to marshal their efforts toward something. Think: “Mary Ellen Bay”. Lacking those persons, we have to develop a consensus among ourselves as to what way we will express our identity now.
The problem of flagging membership is ongoing in *all* types of clubs, especially service oriented ones. We already heard about the Westminster Kiwanis Club dissolving because they couldn’t attract enough members. Back in the day, people joined clubs for “social capital” and to connect with the life of their community. In some businesses, you *had* to belong to achieve anything or climb the social ladder. The people one met in clubs were likely to be those who you would still be involved with decades later, building on trust, networks and social norms to achieve community objectives.
What changed? Lots of things: residential areas are in flux. People more readily relocate to follow employment opportunities elsewhere or are bedroom commuters with little time and connection to their towns. With both couples working, free time is spent playing catchup on chores and family time may be more valued than taking on other obligations. The bad economy places job worries higher than club meetings. Parents who thought they’d have time have boomerang children returning home or have taken on grandchild duties to help out their working children. The Internet also has cut into face time meetings because many of the younger generation find satisfaction in networking this way rather than face to face. People can use the ‘Net to research all sorts of areas for niche interests negating the need to attend seminars.
Other researchers blame the Baby Boomers for starting what appears to be an irreversible decline in memberships by opposing anything deemed “Tradtional” or “Mainstream”: the Anti- Establishment stance. Yet, there’s this: “Only nationality groups, hobby and garden clubs, and the catch-all category of “other” seem to have resisted the ebbing tide.”
Perhaps it is because garden clubs have a mix of hobby, education, social and civic components that provide value to the member and allow expression in different arenas to suit varying personalities who join garden clubs.
Let’s have the conversation. Who are we and what are our goals now?
