Bravely Connected

When I think about building community, my mind has been thinking about gardening. There’s a simple framework everyone knows: buy the seed, plant the seed, water the seed, wait for it to grow. But if you’ve ever tended a garden, you know that just following the steps doesn’t guarantee a harvest, as I am finding out first hand with my first ever garden this year.

This has been very real to me in two recent experiences: wildfire recovery in Denare Beach, Saskatchewan, and community work here in Ogden.

After the wildfire, families returned to ashes where their homes once stood. We could have just worked through a checklist, but community isn’t built from checklists. It’s built from people. In Denare Beach, that looked like sitting with homeowners while they sifted through rubble for anything they could salvage, sometimes in silence, sometimes in tears. It was listening more than anything. It was noticing when someone needed practical help—and when what they really needed was to not feel alone.

The same is true here in my community. We’ve started projects that, on paper, seemed straightforward: events, meetings, initiatives. But what’s grown has rarely followed the neat “ladder” of step one, two, three. Instead, it’s looked more like a lattice. A lattice doesn’t force a plant into a straight line; it simply offers support so the plant can grow in the direction it was designed to. In Ogden, that has meant listening deeply to neighbours, noticing what sparks energy, and adjusting plans when something isn’t resonating.

Frameworks are helpful, but community is alive. It bends, surprises, resists, and blossoms in ways we can’t predict. Building community is an act of attunement—paying attention, adjusting, supporting growth without forcing it.

In both wildfire recovery and in my community of Ogden, I’ve learned this: community building isn’t linear. It’s ambiguous, messy, and unpredictable. But like a garden, when we hold both structure and flexibility, when we water and wait and listen, what emerges is something beautiful—something stronger than we could have scripted.

You can have a clear plan, gather resources, and set up structures—but people don’t grow in neat, predictable lines. Community is alive, organic, and full of surprises.

Just as a gardener listens to the soil and pays attention to when a plant needs more water or less sun, community builders must listen to the people they serve. What are they saying? What’s working? Where is there resistance? What needs more space to breathe?

There’s an ambiguity to this process. You don’t always know what will sprout, and sometimes what grows isn’t what you expected at all. But if you’re willing to nurture, adjust, and let things unfold, what emerges can be more beautiful and resilient than anything you could have forced into being.

Community building is not linear. It’s alive. And like a garden, it requires patience, flexibility, and deep listening.

If we can learn to hold both the framework and the freedom, we’ll not only grow strong communities—we’ll grow communities that were meant to be.