JARS v64n4 - Try a Local Rhododendron Conference in Your District

Try a Local Rhododendron Conference in Your District
Ron Knight
Pender Harbour, British Columbia, Canada

Douglas Justice
New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada

"This was the most practical and demonstrative conference I have ever attended."
"The conference was very, very enjoyable. Lots of great information on things that could not be found in any book."

After a year of planning, it was most gratifying for us to hear those kinds of comments about our first local conference in ARS District 1, held at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Botanical Garden in Vancouver, BC, Canada, last April. Moreover, the conference brought in new ARS members, was financially successful, and was easy and fun to organize. Any district or chapter could run a similar event, and here are some guidelines as to how to do this.

What's the best time? Each spring, the American Rhododendron Society holds a national convention that alternates between eastern and western North America. When the spring convention is on the east side of the continent, there is a fall Western Regional Convention and vice versa. This means that every other year, there is likely to be no spring rhododendron convention in your area, and that's the ideal time to run a local rhododendron conference.

The ARS convention schedule is published years in advance. In 2008, we saw that for 2010 there was an ARS National Convention in May in New York and a Western Regional Convention in October in Oregon. Therefore, we decided that 2010 would be the perfect time to offer a Vancouver conference in April when a high percentage of species rhododendrons were in bloom and before our District 1 Chapters planned to hold their spring shows and sales.

Conference Structure : We wanted to try some different things at this conference, and so we began by drafting a business plan that included the following decisions:
1) The conference would be focused on learning about rhododendrons. We therefore named it "The Ultimate Rhododendron Conference" and planned separate classes for novice and veteran gardeners.
2) The location would be in a rhododendron garden where we could offer field experiences to complement the classroom learning.
3) Our target audience would be rhododendron and garden club members on the west coast within driving distance of Vancouver. We would limit registration to 100, which was the maximum seating in our two classrooms.
4) We would assume no financial risks up front, such as booking blocks of hotel rooms, reserving tour busses, or purchasing advertising.
5) The conference would be simple to organize. For example, most communication and publicity would be over the internet; there would be a single low, all-inclusive conference fee; and there would be no choice of activities.
6) The conference would be on a weekend with garden tours held on the previous Friday only, within easy driving distance of UBC.
7) We would leave evenings free for participants to enjoy the full tourism offerings in Vancouver. There would be no banquets, cocktail parties, or after-dinner lectures.

On the final day of the conference, we used classroom time with all delegates to complete an evaluation questionnaire. The results were overwhelmingly positive.

Final review : We were very pleased that all 100 seats were filled, and we had a waiting list for the novice class. Delegates came from the Greater Vancouver area, Vancouver Island, and from all west coast states. We learned that email and website publicity can be as effective, if not more so, than printed material in magazines, newspapers or posters, and we did not have to spend one penny on advertising.

Our financial break-even point was 50 registrations, and 40 of these were sold three months before the conference began, likely in response to our offer of a generous discount for early registration. Cost before Jan 1 was $120, and cost after was $155. It included classroom materials, parking, garden tours, two lunches and coffee breaks and free admission to the UBC Botanical Garden. After all the bills were paid, we were able to give a $2000 donation to the UBC Botanical Garden. Overall, the conference generated more profit per registration than most ARS conventions.

We were very surprised to find that 40% of all registrations were from garden club members who had not previously attended a rhododendron convention. Several of these people took out ARS memberships during the weekend. We suspect that garden clubs may be the richest source of new ARS memberships in the future if they can be reached. These people are already keen gardeners, many want to learn more about rhododendrons, and they are quite willing to be members of more than one club if the program offered is relevant and interesting.

The whole conference was organized by only two people - us! No committees (thankfully!) were involved. However, we were grateful for the help provided during the conference weekend by eight volunteers, who assisted with food preparation, setup and cleanup, registration and memberships tables, plant sales, and garden tours.

We very much appreciated the willingness of the ARS Executive Committee to consider our local conference as a trial venture and to give us free publicity in JARS and on the ARS website. In return, we agreed to share our experience with other ARS Districts. To this end, we are offering a session on "How to Plan a Local Rhododendron Conference" at the Western Regional Convention in 2012, in Nanaimo, BC. In addition, a DVD disk will be made available in November 2010, containing our business plan, organizational details, curriculum outlines, conference schedule, correspondence to delegates, meal arrangements, publicity and registration templates, poster masters, evaluation results with delegates' recommendations for improvements, and over 100 photographs.

Ron Knight is a member of the Vancouver ARS Chapter and has served as past president and as a Director for ARS District 1. He is a retired biology teacher, and he and his wife Carla have created Caron Gardens at Pender Harbour, BC, where they display over 500 different rhododendrons and teach gardening courses.

Douglas Justice is Associate Director and Curator of Collections for the UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research and is an instructor at UBC, teaching horticulture and plant identification courses. He is a member of the Vancouver Chapter and a former editor, with his wife Karen, of that chapter's newsletter, the "Indumentum".