by Marvin N. Miller, AIB President

Last month, I had the pleasure of representing America in Bloom at the Communities in Bloom (CiB) Symposium in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. During the symposium, I was awe struck by the message of one keynote speaker who, during his speech, employed a tactic from his high school teaching days. Frustrated with the attitudes of a group of teenagers, he asked his students to consider how they would go about preparing for life if their goal was not how to succeed in their careers, but how to fail. Steps such as skipping class, failing to study, doing drugs, and showing up drunk were among the obvious answers. Having written the suggestions on the board, he then engaged the students by asking them to contemplate the steps if the opposite was the true goal. “Instead,” he asked, “how would you approach life if your goal was to succeed?”

In a similar fashion, Doug Griffiths, now Alberta’s Minister of Municipal Affairs, asked the CiB symposium audience to consider their beautification objectives from a 180 degree perspective. He asked them to consider how they would proceed if the objective was to avoid beautification efforts, but instead had as their goal the challenge of embracing urban decay. Instead of planting flowers, trees, shrubs, and groundcovers, he asked, “How would you proceed if your goal was to convince folks to avoid planting these horticultural niceties? How would you proceed if the goal was to allow paint to chip, graffiti to overtake buildings, and litter to accumulate in the streets?” Indeed, he continued, “How would you proceed if you wanted to kill any sense of civic pride in your community?”

Griffiths suggested it might be a tough sale to convince folks to let property values slide and to lose all sense of pride in home and community. “Who among us would readily let decay overtake our community?” he asked. He begged, “Consider the consequences of such an approach.”

A good way to kill civic pride would be to introduce divisiveness. A good way to eliminate the planting of plants would be to tax them excessively, to legislate against them, or to establish roadblocks that prevented folks from gathering together to improve their communities. A good way to initiate decline would be to remove all waste receptacles, reduce or eliminate garbage pick-ups, and the like. Politics aside, the discussion was such that it begged audience members to consider plants as pure luxuries that could not be afforded.

If, on the other hand, beautification and civic pride were the true objectives, an all-out campaign to recruit volunteers to work towards the common goal would be warranted. It would be appropriate to organize the citizenry, to contemplate the rewards from working together, and to imagine how great each community could become. If progress is the true goal, it would be more important for everyone to pitch in to accomplish that goal even at the expense of worrying who got the credit for the efforts. And to add value to the concept, it is probably important to consider plants as necessities that no community could live without, if not for the beauty they bring, then for all of the added economic, psychological and sociological, and environmental benefits they bring to a community.

Indeed, the steps to embracing civic pride become more obvious if one, for a brief moment, considers what the opposite approach might be. As Thanksgiving approaches, let’s be thankful that plants do indeed provide such a multitude of benefits for all to embrace. Have a happy holiday!