Where are the younger members

[Michael J Campbell]

But David,you still have to water it.

[fermi de Sousa]

This sounds very familiar! I like telling people at our club (the Ferny Creek Hort Society) that when I joined in the 1980's I was one of the youngest members - and I still am!

Maggi,
don't you think this discussion deserves its own thread?

cheers
fermi

[Maggi Young]

Good idea, fermi.... I have split it off to its own thread.  

 It is really heartening that we do have a good number of younger members here in the Forum.... Students who have the brains to see the pleasure in plants! 

[Anthony Darby]

Perhaps some of our younger members could reply?

[Darren]

Well I was a younger member once. Susan and I were still in our twenties when we joined the committee of the North Lancs group. Most of our friends are significantly older than us but we find we have nothing in common with most of our own generation.

I absolutely agree with Michael about the gardening gene not switching on until 35 though. We were a bit early!

There are lots of younger gardeners at my workplace but they are very narrowly focussed on food production. Possibly a result of being environmental scientists. I once sent our group programme to the work garden club coordinator and he literally looked down his nose at me and stated 'we don't grow......flowers..

I also agree with Maggi about youngsters claiming to be 'bored'. It makes my blood boil and they should be forced to go to a library and look up 'attention deficit disorder'. Who knows, they might even discover what books are for?

[mark smyth]

When I speak to people at our show or at lectures they have this blinkered view that to be a member of an alpine organisation you have to be an expert growing of stunning alpines

Recently I was almost knocked off my feet when a young person at a lecture I was giving asked "would you recommend Crug Farm?"

[David Nicholson]

I don't think we are by ourselves in lacking younger members,  our sister Society, the AGS, has a similar problem and seems to have a recruitment problem in general. Indeed the AGS is holding a Symposium at Pershore on Saturday to discuss member involvement and recruitment issues. I had hoped to attend but family circumstances mean I shall have to be elsewhere but I think John Dower is attending on behalf of the East Lancs local AGS Group.

We are lucky in that the Forum is very much an interactive grouping in a style that will appeal to both young and not so young and we have a good sprinkling of younger members, Arne, for example, being perhaps our youngest participating member at the tender age of 18. I don't think we should worry too much, after all we are used to sowing seeds and waiting some years before we see a result aren't we?

[tonyg]

Isn't it sad that one can't see any 20-30 year old faces on the AGS and SRGC pictures which are shown on the web or in the Journals? What do the youngsters do???

So many comments in this thread ring true!  BUT we do have a few young faces ... Calvin B, Cephalotus, one of the Michaels ...
Like Darren I was a younger face once, joined the AGS aged 27 .... still the youngest member of my local group over 20 years on.
Changing lifestyles might push the age at which the gardening gene kicks in up a bit, but I think there will still be new faces yet ... just thay might be greybeards (or blue rinses) rather than 30somethings!
I am going to the AGS symposium tomorrow .. if I can regain consciousness in time for a 545am start

[Ragged Robin]

The great thing about alpine gardening is that you do not need a garden to do it and I do know young people who take great pride in growing plants on their windowsills or in a window box. In these harsh economic times I hear from the young that there is a real desire to return to the rewarding pursuits of making and creating things for your home space and not spending hard earned cash on ready made goods. Maybe posting their efforts on Facebook or Web albums is their way of sharing amongst friends - I wonder if there is a way to create a window to/advertise the SRGC on sites they they frequent?

[Stephenb]

I joined our local gardening club here in Norway when I was 25 and I couldn't even speak the language. I'd gardened then for about 5 years, disregarding the strawberry patch I had when I wore short trousers. I don't feel any different from when I was 25, so I consider myself young still...

Anyway, I'd always assumed that a lot of you digitally age their pictures (like me) so that they feel more comfortable with their perception that everyone else is old?  

[David Nicholson]

I joined our local gardening club here in Norway when I was 25 and I couldn't even speak the language. I'd gardened then for about 5 years, disregarding the strawberry patch I had when I wore short trousers. I don't feel any different from when I was 25, so I consider myself young still...

Anyway, I'd always assumed that a lot of you digitally age their pictures (like me) so that they feel more comfortable with their perception that everyone else is old?  

 

[Gerry]

I'd be pretty worried if I saw a load of teens and twenties on here. That would mean this was fashionable.

[tonyg]

The great thing about alpine gardening is that you do not need a garden to do it and I do know young people who take great pride in growing plants on their windowsills or in a window box. 

My first alpines were grown in pots kept in a window box!!
When I got an allotment nearby I was able to rotate my pots
Then, eventually I got a house with a garden
Now I have children and a very scruffy garden

[Giles]

I would suggest that public interest in plants and gardens has never been higher, and that there were horticultural colleges full of potential new recruits.
If a society is not able to engage with these people, meet their needs, and appear relevant to them, it deserves to fall by the wayside.
Societies continually need to adapt and evolve, develop new areas of interest, and embrace new technologies, if they are to flourish.
Societies that remain fossilised, carry on doing the same old thing (because that's the way it has always been done) will pass in to obscurity, and it is only right they should.

[Maggi Young]

I am sure you are correct , Giles. It is a question of how best to engage with these folks, isn't it?
The SRGC does what it can, when it can........ offers of free Student memberships etc, and of course, there is the Diana Aitchison Fund, administered by the Club, which can offer good grants to Students. In spite of  considerable efforts in these directions, however, there is never exactly an avalanche of applicants for the free places or the grants!