Twitter and the Gardener
By Vanessa Richins
For those of you who haven’t been introduced to it, Twitter is a popular social network service.
Participants write miniblogs of 140 characters or less.
You can choose to “follow” other people’s “tweets” (the name for the postings) and see what they have written, as they post.
What does this have to do with gardening?
Over the past few months I have been able to discover many other gardeners who use Twitter. I’ve been able to read articles people have put on their blogs and websites (I share my own articles and blogs this way). I’ve been able to read and post garden anecdotes and laughs. Even though it’s winter now, there’s still many messages about gardening every day.
For example, I wrote about Will Allen of Growing Power when he won his genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation. . I recently got a tweet post from someone who was offering a free teleseminar featuring Will Allen (I didn’t learn about it in time to write about it here – I apologize). I really enjoyed listening to the hour long phone call and hearing from a man I admire greatly. I wouldn’t have heard about it except for Twitter.
Interested in getting a Twitter account?
Simply sign up, choose a username and customize your profile. Then you can start following people who, will hopefully, follow you too. You can search for people who are talking about gardening, or any topic you like.
Here are 10 gardeners I would suggest following, with names/affiliations as known:
- http://twitter.com/treesandshrubs (this is my account!)
- http://twitter.com/pallensmith (P. Allen Smith)
- http://twitter.com/clifemag (Country Lifestyle magazine)
- http://twitter.com/finegardening (Associate Web editor, Fine Gardening magazine)
- http://twitter.com/herbgardens (Amy Jeanroy – Herbgardens, About.com)
- http://twitter.com/landscaping (David Beaulieu – Landscaping, About.com) by
- http://twitter.com/kissmyaster (the sassy, saucy owner of www.kissmyaster.com)
- http://twitter.com/FarmerPhoebe (She is the one who had the Will Allen teleseminar)
- http://twitter.com/yougrowgirl (runs www.yougrowgirl.com)
- http://twitter.com/farmersalmanac (The oldtime Farmer’s Almanac, on Twitter!)
Hope to see you on Twitter!
January 2nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Very cool! I am an avid twitter-er, It will be fun to follow some gardeners too! I’m very excited! @dizzibloom btw
January 2nd, 2009 at 2:51 pm
I have met many more garden tweeters since I made this list. If you want more, send me a message on there and I will give you suggestions.
Check out http://twittgroups.com/group/greenthumbs for more. Kathy at http://www.coldclimategardening.com/ also made a couple of blog posts full of garden tweeters.
I added you today!
Vanessa
January 29th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Ness –
This is great. I hope you can work to expand your articles and popularity. If you eventually get into say Martha Stewarts magazine you could make great money from home.
By the way – do you garden in Utah or you mom’s house? I’m relandscaping a house I’m fixing up to rent to vacationers – I can always use some advice and help.
Verlin