SHARE YOUR HORTICULTURE METAPHOR

Have your own idea for a Horticulture metaphor? We’d love to hear it. Share it with us here.

“Sledgehammers are hard-hitting stories that highlight villains and wake up the choir. They hit people over the head and make them dizzy and mad.”

– Submitted by Ellen Schneider  

*The Sledgehammer was in the Horticulture toolbox at the beginning, but many media makers found it too judgmental or derogatory to be helpful.

“The Soil is an essential precursor to a healthy garden—as important as the seeds or the tools. If it isn’t rich and prepared, your strategy cannot grow.” 

– Submitted by Diana Barrett, President, Fledgling Fund (paraphrased from Media Impact Funders’ panel Oct 31, 2014)

“Creating the content itself is like growing a garden. Some of us Rake, others prune, someone has to water, and so on. For me, content always comes first.”

-Submitted by Juan Devis, Sr. Vice President of Content Development and Production at KCET Link

“Blending stories with group facilitation is like landscaping. As a landscaper, I rake and mow the lawn of noise to help the important issues stand out; I edge the flower beds so others can distinguish boundaries more clearly; I trim and fertilize the larger plants of value so they can, over time, grow deeper roots; I plant seedlings to connect everything discussed into flowing lines and levels of coherent beauty. I withstand the heat of controversy because I was born in the tropics, and I am patient because I know Nature has her own pace and political seasons. As I facilitate growth, I try and blend into the landscape like the invisible laborer so that in the end the owners of the garden hardly notice me, falling in love with their new landscape independently and naturally.”

-Submitted by Fabio Lomelino, Outreach Specialist at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service

“Gardeners (organizations) can build the capacity of a garden (movement) by inviting other gardeners (content creators) into the garden, expanding the base of gardeners. All try their hand at gardening, learning together. Everyone is happy with whatever the harvest brings, because their goal is to learn how to plant the seeds, and tend the garden, together. In the future, new gardeners might take up a trowel, a shovel, or a rake.”

-Submitted by Ashraf Rushdy, Representative at the Baha’i Community of Canada.