club members was Big Government
Diane Whitehead (Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:08:42 PST)

I have wondered about the non-involvement of different cultural groups
in our ornamental plant clubs. It is very strange to attend a plant
convention in an area of Vancouver where 60% of the residents are
Asian, and see only a couple of Asian attendees.

However, joining clubs might be a strange thing to do. Why aren't we
focussing on our families? Why aren't we spending all our spare time
actually gardening instead of sitting around talking about it?

I thought that maybe alpine plant growers might come from countries
with mountains. Do we have a disproportionate number of descendants
of Swiss and Austrians in NARGS? Do the bonsai clubs have Chinese and
Japanese members? In Japan, many girls take flower-arranging classes,
but they buy the flowers on the way in to class. I don't know about
flower-arranging clubs here.

The people growing vegetables in our allotment gardens are often
fairly-recent immigrants.

The San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum has an
outreach to various ethnic groups, asking them how they can help with
their needs and interests. It was a while back that I attended a
lecture on what they are doing, so I've forgotten a fair bit. I
remember they have special events for Chinese New Year, including
plant sales of lucky gold-flowered plants.

Diane Whitehead