GWA Symposium

---

This is a repeat of what was posted on the garden writers list on gardening list (huh?)

This was my first time attending a GWA convention. In the past I've attended
a number of other gardening conventions so my opinions and thoughts are
biased in that direction.

As a local person, I volunteered to be a bus captain throughout the event. I
also opted to sleep at my own house since it's only 4 miles from the hotel
and I have kids at home.

First impression was working the day before the convention on stuffing back
packs. I was amazed at the amount of paperwork and I immediately realized
this would not be like the garden tour/conventions I had attended in the
past. In fact, I have so much paperwork here at home that I will have to
figure out how to thin it drastically.

First timers meeting was OK. I wore a tag saying "first timer" and gathered
with "mentors". I'm pretty outgoing so I enjoyed that time. From there I
went to the meeting of this internet group. C.L. did a great job on that,
overcoming several obstacles thrown at her by the hotel and some business
people who sat at our table and ate our snacks :-)

Tours:

Saturday morning I was back at the hotel at 5:45 am to captain the early
"photo shoot" bus. The sound system was broken and we only had a 3 mile
drive to the garden. It was frustrating trying to read the garden
descriptions as I walked up and down the aisle and people shouted that they
couldn't hear me. One man learned that New Yorkers can be grumpy that early
in the morning as he kept asking me to make him a copy of what I was
reading. I'm afraid my telling him that I didn't have a copier up my
B....b...ack pocket wasn't the right reply.

The gardens on Saturday were breath taking and I had seen most of them
before. The traffic was amazing, no traffic jams. One thing I noticed
immediately was that people jumped from seat to seat, even bus to bus and
constantly sat with different people. Other non-business garden tours don't
seem to do that and I was very interested in it. It turned out the tours
were an excellent way to network.

The gardens on Sunday were a disappointment except for Madoo (Robert Dash's
garden) and the dinner location of Ivy Acres. Getting stuck in traffic and
being part of the group that was involved in a fender bender didn't help
situations. We left the hotel late and arrived at the first garden at our
scheduled departure time. Maybe it was a good thing that the garden wasn't
interesting anyway, I was not even tempted to leave behind a nose or forhead
print.

Monday's gardens of Old Westbury and Planting Fields are extremely well
known to me so I was interested in other peoples reactions to them. Both
have their highs and their lows. Both tend to peak in the spring.

Tuesday I opted for Wave Hill and NYBG. Each could have been all day events,
they were stunning!

Lectures:

As a bus captain I had to skip the later scheduled lectures. I attended four
lectures plus the key note speaker's lecture on healing communication.

The lecture on Publishing/self publishing with Jim Long, Nellie Neal and
Betty Mackey was the most useful to me. It alone was worth my registration
fee and I will look into getting a copy of that program.

Dency Kane's lecture on Photography was excellent for people who want to
improve or learn about photography. I have never taken a photography class
but have attended several photography lectures. This past spring I even did
my own lecture looking at the garden through my lens and added photography
tips but in no way I'm I a "professional". Dency's photography was excellent
and her way of addressing the issues was fantastic. I would highly recommend
her as a lecturer but I will add that I didn't learn anything new in her
lecture. Maybe because of the participants I was expecting this to be aimed
towards a more "advanced" audience but afterwards I realized that would not
have been practical since in truth the professional photographers would
probably not attend this type of program.

The other two lectures I attended were on trial results on container plants
and Bluebird Nursery's perennial talk. Just wasted a half hour searching
through the mountains of paperwork to find the names of the speakers for
these lectures to no avail. Both speakers were enjoyable but the container
program was not what I expected. My fault, I should have read the
description over, I was expecting to learn about some great/new container
planting combinations. I'm sure many in the audience learned much about the
individual plants trialed. The perennial talk was extremely well put
together and I think the audience learned much from that too.

The lesson I took home from these lectures is to attend the lectures on
topics that I know nothing about, but that is an extremely personal note. In
the past 5 years I've attended hundreds of lectures so it could be I'm
becoming jaded.

The keynote lecture on healing speach was not one I was interested in before
the symposium. Amazingly though it is the one that stuck with me the most
and is the one that I have refered to almost daily.

Vendors:

Maybe this topic belongs at the top of this post. For sure, the vendors were
a highlight of the convention. Almost every booth had something that I found
interesting or educational. The product "give aways" were fantastic and
something I had not expected. If I had known the amount of stuff given away
I would have driven my SUV and not my husbands sedan :-)   It is quite
exciting to be given the opportunity to grow many new plants in my garden.
The Hydrangeas and Roses in particular were much appreciated since neither
were well represented here before and hundreds of people tour my garden.

Volunteering:

As a local volunteer I wanted to add this note. Being a bus captain did
indeed do what I hoped, it gave me the opportunity to meet many people but
did not leave me with much time to talk with them. It also made me miss
lectures and as the last person off the bus and the first back to the bus it
greatly limited the time I could spend touring the gardens. The "behind the
scenes" view I was afforded was extremely educational. The amount of work
shouldered by the national organization and the local committee was
staggering.

Summary:

The symposium with my own personal highs and lows still amounted to much
more than I had expected. The attendees were what made it such a success, I
was thrilled, awed and inspired by everybody around me. I will do all that I
possibly can to attend next years symposium.

Melanie Vassallo
m*@optonline.net

_______________________________________________
gwl-g mailing list
g*@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/gwl-g