Columnist picked for North American prize
‘I was doing the happy dance in my office,’ says Theresa Forte
It took some digging for gardening columnist Theresa Forte to learn she had won a major prize for her writing.
When the 2019 GardenComm Media Awards list was released, there was no winner named in the writers category. That seemed odd.
“I thought, that bugs me. How can no one win?” she said.
“There’s no one across the entire United States and Canada that wrote a gardening article for a newspaper that was worthy of an award?”
So last month she wrote the public relations firm that sent out the release: “I said I can believe I didn’t win. But nobody won?”
Her call planted the seed of doubt. They checked and found they’d forgotten to include that category in their release.
“Actually, I had won,” Forte said.
“I was doing the happy dance in my office, let’s say.”
The first gardening column she ever wrote was supposed to last just six weeks, for a small weekly newspaper. She liked doing it, though, and moved to The Niagara Falls Review.
Twenty-one years and more than 900 articles later, her weekly column is a perennial favourite for readers of The St. Catharines Standard, The Welland Tribune and The Review.
The GardenComm awards recognize “the highest levels of talent and professionalism in garden communications” across North America.
Winners in five categories — writing, photography, digital and broadcast media, publishing and trade — are awarded silver medals of achievement.
Forte won her medal for her Dec. 21 column, “Discover the magic of the winter garden.”
In announcing her win — finally — GardenComm noted “more than just a how-to column, Forte explores the benefits, joys and occasional tribulations of home gardening, along with profiling exceptional private and public gardens.”
The Silver Award for the top overall winner will be announced at a ceremony in Salt Lake City, Utah, in September.
Nine hundred articles is a lot of writing. And not all garden columnists write year-round, but Forte does.
“To be honest I feel like people need it even more in the winter, because you need that little fix,” she said. “If you’re a garden fanatic, you like it all year.”
She does regular talks for community groups or gardening clubs. The best days, she said, are when it’s winter outside and her audience wants to hear and talk about colour and warmth.
But writing upwards of 50 columns a year is a tall order. She admitted, “I do a lot of head-banging.” Every year brings its own story ideas, though. Weather changes, growing conditions are different, new trends come up.
A popular topic now, she said, is “foodscaping — basically blending food in with your ornamental plants.”
“A little bit of both … 10 years ago, nobody did that.”
She said “typically I find what works best for me is to write about whatever I am doing myself in my own garden.”
“I have a big garden. That seems to strike a chord with people.”
And she really does have a big garden at her Niagara Falls home. It takes up all of her front yard and much of her backyard.
She is semi-retired from her job as a controller for a manufacturing firm.
“Thursday and Friday are my gardening days now,” she said.
“It’s a very big luxury for me to be able to do that now. Since the spring, I’ve been spending at least two days a week out here fulltime.”