How are your up-cycling efforts going? Do you find much of your recycling efforts go towards down-cycling instead? Do you have any idea what either if those terms mean? Neither did I until yesterday. How many of us in the "green knowledge" fields do?

When often use terms that we're more appropriate to the past. Terms like "garden center", "nurseryman", or "recycling" are somewhat archaic. How many places that sell horticultural supplies are truly the "center" of most peoples gardening efforts anymore? 20 years ago there was only one place to buy horticultural supplies, the local garden center. Not today. The term "nurseryman" really doesn't describe what most people selling garden supplies in retail do these days.

I am wondering if semantics may be a larger impediment to the survival of the "local garden center"  than we think. Do the younger generations just entering into their love affair with greenery even know what we mean when we say, "garden center"? I don't know. It caught me, and a roomful of Sacramento "Master  Gardeners" (another outdated term?) by surprise when the term up-cycling was used last night.  None of us knew, until someone online looked it up for us.

Words are powerful symbols. Maybe it's time to be more imaginative, and update our terminology to reflect the world we live in today? I am not suggesting we rush into making any huge changes yet. We should however open our minds to the idea that how we describe ourselves  or our offerings, may not relate in tomorrows world.