Steve never did plant his garden, instead he put it off feeling like too much if an amateur to even begin buying seeds, and instead invasive creeping Charlie and thistles colonized his decaying garden beds.
I know those guys are trying to be helpful, but to a newb they can feel like you’re not ready to even start your hobby, when the best way to start any hobby is to go and get something started, even if it isn’t perfect.
If you go to a local seed store they’ll probably be able to point you to native wildflowers, or there are lots of sellers online for seeds.
The local plant centers are wonderful sources of knowledge. Bring them some pictures and there will be some nerd there ready to geek out. This is community building. :)
I know those guys are trying to be helpful, but to a newb they can feel like you’re not ready to even start your hobby
Don’t let other people hold you back.
If you’re trying to start a new hobby and you get put off by people giving you information because you think they’re being condescending, learn to put aside the personal feelings so you can focus on the thing you wanted to focus on.
New information is useful regardless of how it was presented to you. You can’t control how other people act, but you can control how you react to it. Learn to take the good and leave the bad.
There’s such a thing as too much information, and it’s not always relevant to a beginner.
Eh, maybe, but native plants tend to be a way better option for new gardeners because they grow so much better. My mom and I tore out all the grass in our front yard and put in native plants and they’re the first plants I didn’t manage to immediately kill. If I’d tried roses, they probably would’ve died and I’d have given up. Instead, I have catmint thriving maybe a little too much and it’s full of bees!
That’s not what the first 2 guys said though, they just criticized his choice of words(even though he’s an amateur) and started ranting about colonizers. It’s not helpful. Comments like that just push new people away and make the community look unwelcoming.
Can I just say that is awful advice. There’s an easy way to save it:
“Tell me where you are and I’ll give you a few good options to start with”
When the poster is clearly a hopeless beginner this kind of response is useless and overwhelming in information that they have no chance of understanding.
Wrong. The first step in gardening advice is to call someone a kkkracker
No, it’s great advice, and if they can’t figure out to google “native flowers in my region” after that then they really are hopeless.
Why is the onus always 100% on the people trying to help, while the newbie gets a free pass on not putting in effort? Frankly if the newbie put some effort in they probably wouldn’t have even needed to make the post in the first place.
Of all the hobbies and random niche things I’ve taught myself on the Internet over the course of 15 years, I’ve only ever had post questions twice. Whatever question one is asking has already been asked and answered. Very, VERY rarely is someone looking for information so niche that it doesn’t yet exist on the Internet.
Have you ever tried to google a specific question like this about a topic you’ve never dipped your toes in? It’s impossible to start.
Meno’s Paradox for modern times.
That’s not how this meme template works at all.
Yes, they should be encouraging him. Not shunning him for his choice
Can we also stop normalizing grass too? Such a fucking pointless resource which needs constant watering, fertilizing and cutting
grass […] needs constant watering, fertilizing and cutting
I think you’re not actually talking about grass but lawns.
Grass in the wild doesn’t need any of that.Stupid useless lawns in front of houses need to go, yes. Grass is great for parks though. For urban settings trees and bushes are kings still.
Roses and their cultivation spread from the Mid East into China, Egypt, Greece etc. thousands of years ago, pretty ignorant to blame it all on European colonialism.
I think the main thing to get out of this is to just see what beauty your natural ecosystem has to offer
At this point, seeing behavior and responses like this in so many communities of my interests, I feel like even that gentle of an approach is still too much agenda-pushing.
Not that the agenda in question lacks for value, ethics, or good intentions, but at the end of the day, based on the newbies inquiry, it’s still some version of, “You’re wrong for wanting to explore your interest. You should do what I tell you to do instead.”
In the communities for my interests that I participate in, I try (and sometimes fail, we’re all human), to explicitly steer clear of doing anything to diminish their enthusiasm, curiosity, and desire to learn. That’s the little ember that they need to really get going, so for me, the priority is not to put that out.
Especially in a case like this where, sure, maybe a native garden is ideal…but the alternative if they get overwhelmed or shut down or forcibly redirected by the community is probably just going to be grass and weeds, or no plants at all.
I think it’s great to offer up the natives as an alternative (while explaining the benefits to both the local ecosystem as well as to the gardener), but I would also say that if you’re going to do that, one should also encourage them to get into their new interest regardless of whether they follow that suggestion or not.
If OP wants to plant tulips, fantastic, and I’ll give you any tips I can on how to do that. I may suggest natives and why they’re also a great choice, but under no circumstances will I go into negative territory in telling them they shouldn’t follow up on their interest, unless of course it’s illegal, dangerous, harmful, etc.
And if op explicitly wants roses and tulips good for them. It should be “here’s how to start out with those. <Tulip info>. If you’re curious, there’s some pretty cool native plants that do well, and local pollinators love em. I think you’ll enjoy them to. Hit me up if you want to chat about selecting native species, I’m pretty into that”
Exactly! Very well said!
Don’t make a new interest a “don’t do what interests you, do what interests me” thing.
I’m big into fishing and while people are generally pretty good to newbies, people can get ridiculously preachy over catch and release vs keeping fish, as well as safe and ethical fish handling practices.
I’m all about educating, but A) you need to do it with positivity and not guilt, B) a lot of times people get super, super anal about it…like… we’re all jamming a hook in a fish’s mouth and dragging it out of the water…in that context, laying it on some wet grass to quickly unhook it and get a picture is not the worst part of its day, and C) just because their fish handling may not be perfect doesn’t mean it’s cruel either…newbies gotta learn, and they’re going to learn better from gentle suggestion and explanation than coming at them telling them how wrong they are.
