DC Gardens promotes public gardens and gardening in the Washington, D.C. area in lots of ways. Hundreds of photos, all marked by month, bring more visitors to DC’s underappreciated public gardens. Our “Local Info” covers where to find plants, volunteer, and learn to garden, and other resources to help residents garden and connect with other gardeners.
DC Gardens went online in 2014 and in 2015 launched a monthly Events E-Newsletter to promote major events of public gardens, community gardens, city government, and more. It promoted upcoming workshops and classes. It gained subscribers quickly and was widely appreciated.
Funding is Needed to Continue the Newsletter
DC Gardens used funds through crowd-sourcing to start up and produce the Events Newsletters for more than a year. So to bring back the newsletter and keep it going, funds to hire a freelancer to do the arduous job. Or another organization could start their own Garden Event E-News.
Who’s Behind It
From upper left: Susan Harris, Tom Stovall, Jim Sohn, Kathy Jentz.
Garden writer and teacher Susan Harris started DC Gardens and continues as its pro bono editor. She co-founded the award-winning blog GardenRant.com in 2006 and posts to it weekly. In 2016 she created Good Gardening Videos, an ad-free, nonprofit website for curated gardening videos. She also edits Greenbelt Online, a nonprofit community website about and for Greenbelt, Maryland.
John Henderson and the nonprofit Green Spaces for DC has been a big help by serving as the fiscal sponsor for DC Gardens.
During its demonstration period DC Gardens contracted with Washington Gardener Magazine editor/publisher Kathy Jentz to promote the gardens and gardening in person (by tabling at local events) and through social media. She did a great job!
We thank these folks for helping with our Indiegogo campaign: Charlotte Germane at the American Horticultural Society, Carolyn Mullett of Carex Design, John Boggan of DC Tropics, and Stephanie Fleming of Behnke Nurseries.
Thanks to graphic designer Allycia Dickens at Type A Designs for our logo, header, and printed materials.
Thanks to Dr. Richard Benfield, and Cindy Brown of the Smithsonian Gardens for inviting Dr. Benfield to speak to garden staff and volunteers in February of ’14. That talk led to the brainstorming that resulted in DC Gardens, as described in this blog story.
Thanks especially to Cindy for recommending DC Gardens in the New York Times.
Richard Benfield and Cindy Brown
Volunteer Photographers
Tom Stovall has been photographing Meadowlark Botanic Garden for years and has donated all those photos to DC Gardens.
Jim Sohn is a retired federal employee who’s donating his photos of River Farm to the DC Gardens campaign. Jim’s photos are collected here on Flickr.
John Boggan and James Gagliardi at the Smithsonian Institution donated their great photos of SI gardens and more gardens nearby.
Professional garden photographers George Brown and Neil Soderstrom are donating their photos in low-resolution size for use on the web. Their photos can also be purchased in high resolution for use in print - directly from the photographers.
Many others are donating some of their best photos to the cause. Who’s next?
To Contact DC Gardens email Susan at DCGardens.
Late last fall I was at a botanical garden conference in DC. I was touring one of the Smithsonian institutions. A couple went up to one of the guards and asked how to get to the US Botanical Garden.
Not only did he not know where it was, he did not even know it existed. The crazy thing is you could see it from the museum. I came to their rescue and was able to tell them how to get there. Good luck on spreading the word about the garden attractions.