How to make friends who really get you (garden edition)

In 2017, I was searching for community.

I was looking for deeper connections around topics that I really cared about. At the time, I ran a blog called “Happsters,” all about spreading happiness, and I decided to create a women’s group of about 15 women who got together 10 times a year to do happiness-based activities based on the 4 “G’s” of happiness: Gathering, Giving, Growth, and Gratitude. We called it “Happsters Squad” and you can learn all about it on Instagram on our old page if you’re interested. These groups grew rapidly, and in the end, we had about 20 groups across the country meeting up and connecting over shared values. It was a blast and I realized then how much I loved to help build community. We even got our groups together to give away flowers as random acts of kindness!

Then, due to a number of reasons, including the pandemic being announced the day after our last event in 2020(!), we paused the groups.

Soon after, I started gardening in my backyard, growing (and talking to) flowers and getting teary-eyed when a dahlia would open up. My interests shifted. I am still very close with many of the incredible women in my Happsters Squad group, but I realized at that time that I was now looking for something much more specific…friends who also loved gardening and flowers. So I got to work…Here are a few things I’ve done that have helped me make flower besties & deepen relationships:

Okay are you ready for the coolest idea ever? Bloom club is a monthly membership where about 10 of us go every Sunday to harvest a bucket of flowers from a flower farm. The flower farm is based in Encinitas, CA, and is called Beeworthy Farms. I’ll be talking more in depth about this in future posts. I have so much to say about how incredible it’s been as a way to make new friends and connect with community every week.

What could be better than hanging out with other flower-lovers every Sunday and also getting to take home your own flowers for the week?!

I talk all about how I got started growing and giving flowers here, but the short of it is that I started inviting family, friends, and even Instagram followers, to come over to my garden to give away flowers to our local community. At the very beginning, people would bring a bouquet to contribute, since I didn’t have enough flowers for the number of people coming. Then, I was lucky enough to connect with markets, florists, and home gardeners who started donating flowers to the cause. Eventually, I created the One Million Flowers Foundation, a non-profit where we spread the flower love regularly.

A volunteer mom (and now a good friend of mine) Stacy Bostrom, started a program called the Solana Beach Junior Gardeners, where families come once a month on Sunday afternoons to take care of the school garden together. While I don’t have any kids of my own, it’s a lot of fun connecting with both the kids and parents as we weed and plant, and we’ve formed a great community there.

Last year, I started a craft club with some of my friends, where each of us got a chance to teach the group a craft. We all signed up for the month we wanted to claim at the beginning of the first craft club. Most of the activities were done in my garden amongst the bees, butterflies, and blooms. We did everything from wreath making to writing flower poetry to ceramic flower-frog making - it was so cool to see what everyone chose as their craft and for them to be able to share it with the group! The photo above was from my friend Lauren from Sound as Color’s craft, where we gathered flowers from my garden and she taught us how to do flower-pounding on fabric. Meeting regularly with the same group of women really bonded us - I highly recommend doing something like this with your friends.

One of my favorite things to do is to invite people over to the garden and then go on a walk around a nearby lagoon afterwards. It’s really fun to share what’s growing with other garden-lovers and a great way to get to know someone better. I also find it’s especially helpful when I don’t know the person too well because we have something built-in to talk about that helps us break the ice. This activity has helped me turn many acquaintances into beautiful friendships. A tip I’ve learned the hard way is to bundle a few garden dates in the same week, so you don’t have to constantly keep your garden in “show” mode!

I’ve connected with so many neighbors because of our Books & Blooms Little Free Library. I put flowers from our garden on the library shelf as much as I can and swap out the books for best-sellers as much as possible. We are a highly trafficked walking street and I often meet people when I’m adding books and blooms to the library. Read some behind-the-scenes deets on our library here.

I’ll be going into a lot of these ideas in more depth over the next few months, but hopefully this gives you a good start on some ways to grow community in your garden and beyond. Whether you’re interested in creating your own little free library or joining a garden club nearby, I’m here to answer any questions you have!