On very topical notes, I have to admit that Today’s Garden Center magazine has a brilliant method of attracting press coverage for garden stores, by inviting local garden writers to lunch to let them look around. I love the idea. LOVE it, and I may expand upon it. In fact, I may resurrect the idea of the “Manchester United Flower Show” as such a luncheon. Of course, I say this as a former writer, and I can imagine the aftermath.
Now, I say this as someone who knows a lot of garden writers, and counts many of them as good and dear friends. I also count a lot of other specialist writers as friends, and know that this won’t work in other venues. Political writers, for instance, are used to this sort of treatment, and always compare a quiet little luncheon to that one they had with “their close personal friend” in the White House or the Governor’s Mansion. Sports writers are easy to feed, but the subtleties of general garden luncheon cuisine are beyond them. And don’t get me going about the insane entitlement issues with film and music critics throwing temper tantrums unless they get freebies and exclusives for them to sell on eBay. (As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, an inexplicably still-employed local writer out here, back when he was a film critic, was notorious for throwing tantrums and fits about getting freebies and exclusive interviews in exchange for positive coverage, and then savaging the venue because he got everything he wanted. He now can’t figure out why his name is a profanity among the music community; I myself was nearly stomped to death at a music festival in 2000 because a band assumed that I worked with him and wanted revenge.)
I don’t mean to imply that garden writers are this bad. Heavens, no. You’ll never hear of a plane full of journalists heading to the Independent Garden Center Show being called “the zoo plane“. Nobody’s going to write a tell-all on the Garden Writers Association on their coverage of garden events. We’re definitely never going to see a film featuring a GWA junket starring Bill Murray:
More’s the pity. Considering some of the absolute loons with whom I associate in gardening circles, on both sides of the counter, I’m not only thinking that these luncheons should be encouraged. They should be mandatory. If the luncheons don’t scare the hell out of the shade of Hunter S. Thompson, we’re not doing it right.