Share a leadership quote and a personal accomplishment this semester

My favorite leadership quote is from Max DePree, "The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant."  I love this quote because it emphasizes the importance of service and not asserting power over others.  My favorite leader is Martin Luther King Jr.  His rise to the top did not come from rallying people with anger or suppressing them.  He gained followers by seeing the needs in his community and helping these people himself.  I want to be the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily without needing a title or a weapon, just like MLK.  I also love this quote because it stresses that leadership requires thanking people. No one succeeds in life without some help from others and I  believe being thankful for these people is a key to success and shows true integrity.  One thing that I have personally accomplished this semester is winterizing the master garden.  This sounds like a trivial task, but in actuality, it took a lot of work and help from others.  One of the tasks needed to complete this project was pulling all of the tomato and pepper plants out of the ground so that new ones could grow in next spring.  This also helped the garden look more appeasing and once the dead plants were gone a passerby could see the beautiful plants that were still alive but previously hidden.  Another task completed in the master garden was pulling up all the shrubs surrounding the garden.  There were about 30 of these creating the perimeter.  Next, I trimmed all the banana plants so that they would not rot over the winter break.  I had to use a pretty large knife to complete this task and it was very fun but pretty time consuming.  Finally, I hauled all the material gathered in this garden to the compost pile.

Pictures from our semester!

Reflection

I have loved working with the Botanical Center this semester!  I have learned how important it is to preserve things for future generations.  For example, when I was gardening in the master garden with Christine, I saw there were $500 reward signs up for information on stolen plants.  People were coming to the garden and stealing entire tomato and pepper plants.  Volunteers usually have to raise funds for these plants so Friends of the Garden were upset that people would just steal what wasn't theirs.  If everyone did this then there wouldn't be any plants for anyone to enjoy at the park.  I have also learned from this experience how important it is for everyone to contribute to projects.  If one person decided that they didn't want to plant bulbs one day or another person decided they didn't want to pull weeds, the plants really suffer in the following season. It is essential for each team member to do their part so that the park can prosper.  The positive outcomes have been learning how to work hard with a group of people who have different leadership styles to accomplish the same goal.  I plan to focus on getting other organizations to volunteer here in the spring. It is rewarding and fun work and I think people can really learn a lot about themselves and others by volunteering here!