A new season of garden club activities begins this fall and the opportunity to attract new members to your club. Your first meetings of the year and club activities are the best opportunities to entice the public to attend and hopefully join your club. Below are a few ideas for building your club’s membership.

  • Place an article in your local newspaper giving the time, location, place and program of your meeting each month. Most papers have a spot for local events/activities where your information can go.
  • Place a tri-fold and hand-outs in your local libraries giving information about your club and a hand-out giving the schedule of meetings and speakers, a contact person, and any other pertinent information.
  • Have a contest that can be publicized in the newspaper to inform the public about your club. The contest can be growing the largest vegetable, the prettiest rose, the smallest vegetable (for black thumb gardeners) or any other contest your club wants to sponsor. A money prize is always a good incentive for people to enter.
  • Have a raffle and publicize it in the newspaper and on the radio. You can get donations from local businesses to raffle.
  • Have your club members visit local organizations, such as Rotary organizations or church groups, and explain what your club does and hand out informational sheets.
  • Offer free starts of vegetables or plants to the public. Often local businesses will let you set up in front of their business to hand them out. Give the public an informational sheet about your club along with the plant.
  • Have interesting speakers/programs at your meetings that the public will want to attend.
  • Donate a tree for Arbor Day or to a Habitat for Humanity Home, which is an NGC project, and have your local newspaper cover the planting.
  • Sponsor activities for Girl Scouts to earn a badge. Pass out information about your club to parents attending.

Now is the time to plan activities that will attract new members and give your garden club publicity so the public knows what you do, when you meet, and that you want new members.

If your garden club has done something to attract new members that was successful, please share it in a blog. Send 1-5 photos and the names of the photographers to azgardenblog@gmail.com.

Photo 1 Karen Bowen

Sponsor activities for Girl Scouts to earn a badge.

Photo 2 Karen Bowen

Plant trees at Habitat for Humanity homes or on Arbor Day.

Photo 3 Karen Bowen

One program that drew a large group of visitors was a tour of a local botanical garden and offering seeds and a cup of soil for the public to plant wildflowers afterward.