Spring, in the meteorological sense, has sprung…. Now is the time to really get involved in PlantNetwork activities and share your passion for horticulture with other professionals!
There are lots of ways to get involved – from attending webinars and events or contributing to the weekly newsletter to sharing projects you are working on: perhaps someone in another organisation or garden is doing something similar and you could pool effort and resources.
How to get involved as a PlantNetwork member
You can do as many of the following as interests you:
- Sign up for a PlantNetwork webinar: there are two taking place this spring and the webinar programme will return in October with more monthly sessions focusing on horticultural topics. All are FREE to PlantNetwork members and if you can’t access the live events, recordings are available…
- Get involved in the Erasmus+ project Craft Skills for Garden Conservation, for which PlantNetwork is the UK partner. All webinars are free and are an opportunity to find out how partners across Europe approach traditional gardening skills – as well as an opportunity to engage in a series of focused workshops across the partner organisations.
- Join an event: we will be running a couple of events in gardens this year as we take the first steps back to our usual training provision. Watch out for news of three events taking place this spring and autumn – green waste management, sourcing and establishing healthy trees, and plant records.
- Send your news to the weekly member’s newsletter which is sent out every Thursday and is an opportunity to share your news, events or any work you would welcome collaboration or sharing. Simply send your item to office@plantnetwork.org
- Suggest a webinar or event topic: is there a training gap you urgently need filling or a topic you would be interested in seeing on our training and events programme? Get in touch with your suggestions.
- Take part in one of the thematic toolboxes we are developing to share skills and network resources across gardens. There is more information about the two toolbox projects below.
- Consider volunteering as a mentor in the PlantNetwork mentoring scheme which is due to launch this spring…
Contribute to a toolbox of resources
Diversity in Gardening (DiG)
We NEED you to get involved with the PlantNetwork Diversity in Gardening (DiG) project. We are creating a member’s resource area focusing on equity, equality, diversity and inclusion (EEDI) and we urgently need content. In particular, we want to hear about the projects you are developing – from creating a more diverse and inclusive work place to engaging hard-to-reach audiences, outreach and education. Would you be willing to share your D&I strategy? Perhaps we could showcase your projects as a case study? The aim is to share your experiences – good and bad – so we can work together to make our gardens more inclusive and welcoming, learning from each other.
We’d also like to hear from you if you are providing EEDI training for colleagues and co-workers – what training are you providing and who is providing the training? PlantNetwork will be putting on training sessions this year but we want to make sure they are useful so do let us know if training provision has been successful for your organisation/garden and what additional training needs you might have. If you are interested in accessing training for the first time, we also want to hear from you.
Get in touch with PlantNetwork to find out more, to arrange an informal chat or to share your projects/training provision information.
Sustainability Toolbox
This year is the PlantNetwork Year of Sustainability and we are creating a resource area or toolbox for members to access sustainability-related materials – from case studies to reports, projects and databases. The aim is to pool resources and knowledge to prevent everyone doing the same thing and create a more sustainable approach to sustainability. If you have a strategy, approach, case study, project or report that you would be interested in sharing, get in touch to find out more about the toolbox.
