Tips for Writing for the National Garden Club Blog

If you have visited the National Garden Club website lately, you might notice that it now has a blog feature. The blog feature provides short, weekly articles for all to read, not just NGC members. These articles are related to the NGC mission and programs or provide information on similar interests such as gardening, pollinators, environment, floral design, climate change, landscape design, forests and wildfires, etc.

Any NGC member can volunteer to write an article for the blog. Blogs are short articles, usually from personal experience, very similar to articles in local gardening newsletters. They are a way to share a personal experience (e.g., growing nightshades or pineapple sage), an NGC program (e.g., NGC youth poetry contest or NGC awards workshops), or an inspiring story that encourages other members/clubs to do something (e.g., a green little free library or Plant America in the fall). 

Because a blog article is posted every week, content is always needed. All NGC members can submit an article. It does not have to be a committee chairperson or a club/state president. Members can send a story any time since content is always needed. If they are timely, they will be posted in a few weeks. Send articles to the NGC Blog Administrator at the general e-mail box: blog@gardenclub.org, or submit material via the wufoo form. Authors should refer to the Blog Guidelines for more information.

The blog article should be written like a story, not just a string of facts. The preferred length is 300 to 1,500 words. Articles are written in a word processing software; the most popular one is Word. In other words, they are written as text; no formatting is required. They should be written in paragraphs, with no page numbers, headers, or footers. Do not worry about your writing skills.  If you have an idea and would like to discuss it with the NGC Blog Administrator before writing, e-mail the Blog Administrator.

We encourage writers to send photos if they have them, but if not, we look for copyright-free images on the Internet. Although it is best only to have a few images, there is no exact limit. When submitting the article, separate the article from the photos so each is an individual file.

Every week, the Blog Administrator sends an article to the editors. At the NGC, we have a team of volunteer editors who will edit the article for punctuation, grammar, and style. The Blog Administrator incorporates the edits. If photos are not provided, the Blog Administrator selects photos and writes captions. The article and photos are e-mailed to the NGC for formatting and uploading on the NGC website.

Once a blog article is posted, everyone can read them because they are on the NGC website. Each blog article can be printed, e-mailed, or shared on Facebook. Anyone can share the article on Facebook to whatever Facebook site they wish. The NGC Social Media editors often will share the blog article to the NGC Facebook site. From there, many members share the article to their own clubs or friends.

Readers shared one piece more than 70 times. Sharing is an excellent promotion for the article and recognizes the author and the NGC.

Recently, a new feature was added whereby anyone can subscribe to the NGC blog. One does not have to be a member to subscribe. To subscribe, people enter their e-mail address on a form. Every week, when a new article has been posted, they receive an e-mail notifying them so they can read the article at their leisure. Information on subscribing is now added to the end of each article.

If you are interested in writing for the NGC blog, look at the past articles to get a feel for the types of articles that are posted. Feel free to send articles via the blog@gardenclub.org e-mail address or through the wufoo form. If you have questions, please do not hesitate to e-mail the Blog Administrator at blog@gardenclub.org. Here are possible ideas:

• NGC committees are a resource of ideas. They are the experts on many of our programs and activities. They can either explain their program further or delve into a behind-the-scenes aspect.
• Any garden club activities that can be inspiring for other garden clubs to do, such as drive-by plant sales, fundraising, anniversary events, planting pollinator gardens at local schools. These are useful if they can be inspiring to other clubs and replicable.
• Plants, gardening, landscaping, floral design, environment, edible flowers/plants, herbs, vegetable gardening, etc.
• Anything related to gardening such as preventing deer damage, saving seed, starting from seed, climate change, regenerative gardening, drying flower heads, making wreaths, etc. 
• Articles that have been already written for a garden club newsletter can be “recycled” for the NGC blog if applicable to a wider audience. Or they may be able to be “tweaked” to make them more general. If the article was written in Word for a newsletter, it can be “re-used” for the blog.
• Look at your local garden club newsletter or state newsletter for ideas; many have well-written articles about plants and gardening that can be used for the blog.
• Tie articles to awareness events such as National Garden week, Arbor Day, Earth Day, National Wildflower Week, National Pollinator Week, National Indoor Plant Week, etc.

Visit our NGC homepage and look at all the interesting stories and creative ideas in the existing blog articles. We hope you will share your own story and expertise by contributing an article to be posted soon.

National Garden Clubs, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) organization that aims to promote the love of gardening, floral design, and civic and environmental responsibility. There is a local club near you, click here to find one and join. Subscribe to the NGC’s blog by entering your e-mail here. You will receive an e-mail when there is a new blog article on the NGC website. You do not have to be an NGC member to subscribe.