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STEVEN BIGGS
Susan Poizner – from the BBC to fruit trees
PHOTO COURTESY STEVEN BIGGS
Icame back to Toronto and the media world had changed,” says Susan Poizner as she talks about becoming a garden writer. She had been living in the United Kingdom, writing about Russia and international relations, doing feature stories, and working in radio.
Poizner’ s passion is telling stories.“ I’ m a journalist. I’ m a filmmaker. I’ m a communicator. And I’ m a radio producer.” But the changes in the media industry and her newfound interest in gardening steered her away from journalism and storytelling. After she helped start a community group that hosted gardening talks and events, she studied landscape design and began work as a gardener.
STORIES OF ORCHARDS AND PEOPLE Today, through her business Orchard People, Poizner has combined her love of telling stories with gardening. Her focus is fruit tree care, education, and consulting.
As we speak, it’ s spring, her busy season for in-person training, teaching and consulting. The in-person work includes site visits, consulting and workshops. Teaching in person is just one part of what she does. The other part is online communications through her website orchardpeople. com. She writes blogs, produces videos and creates online training.
Poizner feels that an informative blog and website— with videos and podcasts— is the way to convert browsers into buyers of her online training.“ My goal is to make sure that there is free content for people who can’ t afford my training or who aren’ t yet convinced that I have good stuff to offer.”
Poizner is very excited about using radio to tell gardening stories.“ One of my loves when it comes to journalism is radio. When I lived in the UK I worked for the BBC World Service and I love radio,” she says. She now has her own program, Urban Forestry Radio, which runs online live on the last Tuesday of the month on RealityRadio101. com.“ The fun part of this show is that I get to interview anybody I
Susan Poizner won a 2015 GWA Silver Award for Orchard People Winter and Summer Fruit Tree Pruning Online Workshop( orchardpeople. com); a 2014 Silver Award for her book, Growing Urban Orchards: The Ups, Downs and How-Tos of Fruit Tree Care in the City, and for Online Fruit Tree Care Education for the New Urban Orchardist.
want— all these fabulous experts who can teach me more and more and more about fruit trees,” she says. For Poizner, the radio show is a powerful networking tool to connect with home and community orchardists from across North America.
FINDING A NICHE When Poizner came back to Toronto from the UK, she didn’ t anticipate working in garden communications. One project— to turn an underused local park into a community orchard— changed that.
Through research, and with the help of extension and industry experts, Poizner and the other project members learned about winter and summer pruning, pests, diseases, soil management and tree selection.“ It took me three years of caring for these trees in our local park to figure out the answer to this one question: What is the minimum that I need to do in order to grow fruit trees successfully?” she explains.“ Once I understood it for myself, I was very easily able to communicate that using
“ I joined GWA when I started realizing that my fruit tree work was bringing me back to my passion of communications,”
— Susan Poizner
all of these skills that I had developed over my lifetime. As a journalist, I find the best way to learn is to write things down in a simple way that I can understand,” she adds. Those notes were the starting point for her book, Growing Urban Orchards: The Ups, Downs and How-tos of Fruit Tree Care in the City.
Poizner’ s next projects will be an intermediate-level fruit-tree care book and course.“ There are so many more fabulous stories I’ ve encountered since I finished my last book,” she says.
GWA AND THE BUSINESS OF COMMUNICATING
“ I joined GWA when I started realizing that my fruit tree work was bringing me back to my passion of communications,” Poizner says. She considers the GWA Media Awards to be a very useful benefit.“ It’ s wonderful to be able to put on my website that my stuff is award winning,” she says, adding,“ That’ s a very valuable thing that the GWA offers.”
GWA helps her meet subjects for storytelling too.“ I love meeting the people and sharing our stories and inspiring each other.”
Steven Biggs is a writer, journalist and speaker who explores the food chain: farm, food and garden.
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