Garden it forward

Snow on a viburnum

Gardeners, please raise your right hand and repeat after me,

"This year I promise, as a gardener, to garden it forward."

Thank you.

How do you garden it forward, now that you've promised to do that?

Here are five ways:

Pass along extra plants, seeds, and produce to those who can use them.

Encourage anyone who shows even a slight interest in gardening to give it a try.

Answer questions about gardening and plants as though it is the first time you've ever heard those questions.

Show others how to garden, even if their garden is a paper cup filled with potting soil.

Be happy in your own garden, no matter what.

There are many other ways to garden it forward. Go forth and do it, and report back on how it is going.

Garden it forward.


(I did, by the way, fall into a bit of a rabbit hole while searching for "garden it foward" on the Internet. I discovered that a somewhat forgotten southern writer, Lily Hardy Hammond is credited with first writing the phrase "pay it forward". She wrote about it in a book she wrote in 1916 - In the Garden of Delights, which really isn't about gardening but is more of a memoir. She wrote in that book, on page 209, "You don't pay love back, you pay it forward."

Love, gardening, it's all the same, right? Well, not really, but the point is, you don't pay another gardener back for helping you learn to garden. You must garden it forward by helping someone else become a gardener, too.)