
There are no rules for blogging, and bloggers can do whatever pleases them.
And what seems to please many garden bloggers is to interact with other garden bloggers in ways other than just leaving comments on each others blogs.
We seek one another out. We want to compare blooms in our gardens, we want to share about gardening books we are reading, we want to commiserate when weather/bugs/rabbits affect our gardens, we want to get ideas from each other.
Why?
Perhaps it is because so many of us garden alone and don’t know nearly enough gardeners in real life so we have a desire to connect with other gardeners online?
Garden designer and writer Elizabeth Lawrence was renowned for writing letters back and forth with other gardeners to compare notes on flowers and bloom times and the how-to’s of gardening. So perhaps we are just doing what gardeners have always done, using online methods of communication?
Regardless of how or why, there is no denying that there is a social aspect to garden blogging. Gardeners do want to connect with one another, through comments left on blogs, through emails, and even face to face. And once connected, they forge strong bonds with one another.
Do other kinds of bloggers make this same connection and have this social aspect?
Why do you participate in Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day or the Garden Bloggers Book Club? Why did so many of us want to meet face to face at the Garden Bloggers Spring Fling?
I turn the comments section over to all garden bloggers to provide their answers and insight.
Comments
Jan Always Growing
With all of the negativity in the world, reading garden blogs is for the most part positive, delightful and uplifting. I enjoy seeing what others are growing, and I love flower garden and nature pictures.
I'm sitting here realizing that feelings aren't easily described. Let me just list a few words that come to mind.
Appreciated colorful
Belong nuturing
Understood creative
Passionate unspeakable
Tender hysterical
compulsive attainable
I still get excited like a kid at Christmastime when a plant is about to open a new bloom--or when someone leaves me a comment, any comment, on one of my posts.
Conversely, there are garden blogs (some of them very nice ones, too) that I have stopped reading so much and rarely if ever comment on because the gardener/blogger doesn't answer questions, even in comments, and doesn't seem to visit other gardeners/bloggers, either. It's not out of some fit of pique or spite... it's just that there isn't that sense of community bringing me back there and keeping me engaged.
I think that bloggers of other passions feel the same way. I have found that on my artsy blog the people that visit there are supportive and encouraging just as garden bloggers are. Actually they are more sensitive about giving advise. No one wants to hurt your feelings which can be done so easily with the written word.
A lot of art wheter in the garden or in another medium is in the eye of the creator. Everyone likes to share their creations, like passing out chocolate chip cookies. There are always those that would prefer which chocolate chips and some that don't like nuts.
Gail
I would also like to mention that when I first began blogging over five years ago there were not very many garden bloggers. There were some though and I got to know a few who I have stayed in contact with all this time. But in general I think blogging has undergone a change since then. It is less "geeky" for one thing. The software itself has become easier to use. It has taken me by surprise that there are so many garden bloggers now and that they are a lot more "social" than bloggers were five years ago.
I started a garden club at my previous employer, it was great fun, I enjoyed it greatly. We had speakers over lunch, organized trips to member's gardens, and had a huge plant swap every spring. When I moved to a new job, I really missed my club, but did not really find any interest in beginning a new club. Now, blogging partially fills that void.
Blogging also allows me to stay in touch with far-flung friends and family. If I go to long between posts, I hear about it!