http://www.ottawahort.org
President's Message - 2004
Yearbook 2004 page 2 By: D.-J. Smith Back to the web versionGood-bye to 2003 and Welcome to 2004!
In opening this book, you are giving yourself a memory of the past year and a window on the coming year. It is a celebration of us as a group, and I hope you will keep it in celebration.
I also hope you will take the opportunity to check out in the Yearbook the events planned for the coming year. This is your opportunity to mix with people who, like you, love to garden and to talk about plants. This is the great value that you get with your membership card. It even beats chat-lines, unless you have access that I dont have to full sensory equivalents of garden tours.
Still, as we settle into our 11th decade, it is a fair question to ask whether horticultural societies are now an anachronism. They so well represent their beginnings in the Victorian belief in progress and improvement. At their worst, they could be seen as snobby garden activists, where "We Who Know" pulled up the others by their bootstraps. At their best, they made horticultural knowledge freely available when only a few had ready access to new plants, new gardening techniques and new horticultural ideas. Is this still needed in todays world of information at the flip of a switch and where even a grocery store can carry a huge range of exciting new plants?
What do we need to do to continue to be useful; to be a place where people want to be? What should our priorities be and what kind of activities should we be carrying out when we enter our 112th year?
To make sure that we continue to grow and to thrive, the Board this year started a process that will go on for several years, a process of continuing renewal. In 2003, a group of Board and general members created the framework for a plan to take us out to 2010. In 2004, the new Board and the membership will build on this work, focusing on a few priorities to make sure we are doing the right things in the right way in those areas. Then, the Board will move on to identify the next set of priorities. I look forward to working with the new executive and the Board on this.
We intend to be a growing Society. Be part of the growth and help create a Society that matters today and in our own community.
Please contact the OHS or the author if you wish to republish these articles.