Regular readers know that I’ve been involved with the annual Garden Bloggers Fling — a 3-1/2-day meetup and garden tour hosted by local bloggers in a different city each year — since its debut in Austin in 2008. After a 2-year hiatus due to COVID, this summer’s Fling in beautiful Madison, Wisconsin, marks the 13th year this fun and educational event will be held.

This year, excitingly, the Fling isn’t only for garden bloggers. It’s also for gardening Instagrammers, podcasters, and YouTubers — essentially anyone with a public outlet for sharing gardening content. Or, as I like to think of my Instagramming, podcasting, and vlogging friends — the new bloggers! The goal is for Garden Bloggers Fling to be more forward-looking in terms of other social media and even more inclusive of diverse voices from all parts of the web. It’s still a meetup for online self-publishers of gardening content — from professionally produced info to personal home-gardening shares — and the guidelines for attending still apply: your outlet must be public, strongly gardening-focused, and regularly updated.

What else hasn’t changed? The Fling is still put on by your fellow bloggers, enthusiastic gardeners like yourselves and the folks who know their local gardening scene the best! Each Fling — and I’ve been to every one — has been worth every vacation day, babysitter/pet-sitter wrangling, and every dollar for two reasons: the people and the gardens. You get to meet your people: other gardening nuts and garden lovers who also love sharing about their passion online. And you get to see a ton of gorgeous, interesting, quirky, and colorful private and public gardens in a new part of the country — or maybe your own region — and meet the people who make them. You learn a lot! There’s also good food, side excursions to a nursery or two, and the opportunity to sightsee in a new city.

There’s nothing else like the Fling, and that’s why many bloggers join the tour year after year, traveling solo to get there but knowing they’ll meet old friends or make new connections as soon as they meet up with the group.

This year longtime Flingers Beth Stetenfeld of PlantPostings and Anneliese Valdes of The CobraHead Blog are planning a great event for us in their hometown. Madison is a college town and the state capital, a city surrounded by sparkling lakes, and the point where the great forests of the East meet the rolling prairie of the Midwest. As Beth and Anneliese say, it’s an excellent place to grow things, and an excellent place to visit gardens together!

Space on the tour is limited, so I encourage you to register ASAP to make sure you get a spot. The dates are June 23 (arrive by midafternoon for the welcome event) to June 26. You can find full details and the registration link here. I hope to see you in Madison!

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Digging Deeper

Need design help with your yard? Hire me as your personal garden coach! Maybe you need replacement plant ideas after the big freeze. Or maybe your landscaping has grown tired, and you want fresh curb appeal. Or perhaps you’re ready to get rid of some lawn and create a pollinator garden, bird habitat, or hangout space for you and your friends. I’m here to help! Contact me to let me know what’s going on, and let’s figure it out together. My range is Austin and suburbs within a 25-min. drive of NW Austin, but I’m flexible and can travel farther with a surcharge, so let me know where you are. Weekday morning appts. only.

Come learn about gardening and design at Garden Spark! I organize in-person talks by inspiring designers, landscape architects, authors, and gardeners a few times a year in Austin. These are limited-attendance events that sell out quickly, so join the Garden Spark email list to be notified in advance; simply click this link and ask to be added. Season 8 kicks off in fall 2024. Stay tuned for more info!

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