Every year for the past 12 years, something amazing has happened. One or two people with no particular event-planning experience have raised their hands and volunteered to host the Garden Bloggers Fling. And every year for the past 12 years, garden bloggers from all over North America and beyond have been able to attend an amazingly fun and exciting garden tour in a new city.
Next year the Fling will be hosted in beautiful Madison, Wisconsin. But after that, we don’t know if there will be a Fling. Why? Because we don’t have a volunteer(s) to host in 2021.
We’ve been working behind the scenes to find a host city for 2021. But unless someone steps forward to say, “I’ll do it!” the Fling won’t happen. It’s that simple.
Maybe YOU can be the one to keep the Fling going! If you’ve ever attended the Garden Bloggers Fling and you have an active (or even semi-active) garden blog, then you can host. You don’t need prior experience in hosting a tour. You just need to be an organized person, a team player, budget minded, and someone with staying power who doesn’t quit until a job is done.
Having contacts in your local garden community is a plus for finding gardens for the tour, but if you’re willing to reach out to people (plant societies, garden clubs, designers, master gardeners, garden writers/communicators), you’ll find great gardens. We can advise you on the rest. In fact we have a handy-dandy Hosting Handbook with all the details so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
It’s a big job, so it’s best to have a partner – ideally another garden blogger who lives in your city. But this is flexible because not every city has multiple garden bloggers able to help. As long as the lead planner is a blogger who’s attended at least one Fling, the co-planner may be a non-blogger. And it’s possible for people to collaborate across the miles, although for logistical reasons you need at least two members of the planning team to be located in the same city.
It’s easy to take an annual event like the Fling for granted, assuming it’ll always be there. But the Fling happens each year only because someone steps up to host. Will YOU be that person in 2021?
If you’re interested or have any questions about hosting, please contact Pam Penick. We hope to hear from you!
Fling Advisory Committee
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