Anyway, I don’t see a lot of mention of possible changes that will affect how people of all ages view gardening, particularly the increasingly detrimental effects of our overly processed food supply grown on lands depleted of nutrients.

The health issues are enormous and are only just becoming more known. The groundswell of growing and or buying locally grown food is going to become more important as the consequences of how we process our food in the US becomes more evident.

Just my two cents worth…

Lexi

I’ve commented elsewhere about the relationship between gardening and home ownership, which some commenters have reinforced here. There’s nothing like owning property and envisioning yourself living there for a few decades to get you interested in gardening. Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen for many of us, whether we’re 30-something or 50-something.

I’m with the marketing folks in wanting to get more young people involved in gardening. But not by selling them pre-arranged pots that will be thrown away once they start looking a little punky.

What attracts me to gardening is that it can be productive, instead of consumptive. You do your homework and buy a pretty perennial that matches your site. In a few years, you have much more of that pretty perennial that you can plant around your yard or share with others.

I remember one of the first gardeners I knew back in my early 20s — a big-time veggie gardener — telling me that what he liked about gardening as a hobby is that while he was visiting with me, his garden what busy soaking up sun and making sweet corn.

Have a good holiday.

I think the “why does it matter” question is a good one. It matters to retailers because they’re trying to make a buck (not that there’s anything wrong with that.) But otherwise, does it really matter? I’m not interested in skiing–so what? Any effort the ski industry puts into getting me on the slopes is a waste of time. I have friends who will just never, ever garden. Big deal. They’ve got other things to do.

And I agree with the other commenters that our generation (I’m on the older end of Gen X) is settling down later. We’re spending our twenties in apartments, or, god forbid, in our parents’ spare bedroom, and we’re not even getting around to that little plot of land until our thirties or forties. Most of us become gardener when we have a little land, a little time, a little money. That’s just not happening for people in their twenties. I think that’s OK. In fact, we’d be better off if people who weren’t interested in gardening lived in townhouses and condos and apartments, leaving the land for parks and wild space.

I think when a lot of new gardeners stick with it when they realize how addictive it can be and calming as well. It also helps having been raised with gardening family.

I was raised in England, so acquired an affection for gardens by osmosis. But sometimes I have some land, sometimes I have some time, and sometimes something else engrosses me.

I’m old enough now to have (some) time and arthritis. What I realize, however, aside from the fact that weeding is my form of meditation, is that gardening is my mode of artistic expression. My husband does the cooking (which is also artistic expression, of course). I can’t draw or paint or arrange flowers (or possibly I have no interest in learning) and gardening is it. However fleeting the moment when a plant or even, rarely, a whole flower bed, looks great, it’s my Monet moment!

As a 25-year old novice gardener, I think this statement does say a lot as to why not all of my friends are into gardening like I am (in fact, none of them are!). But, I am the only one who has a house…When my husband and I lived in an apartment, I had a sad little basil plant growing on a windowsill (which my cat eventually knocked over and chewed on anyway), and this was the extent of my green thumb! But, as soon as we got our house, I became addicted to dirt! I definitely think that as more of those in my generation “grow up” and have a place to call home, the more they will turn to gardening as a hobby (while listening to an iPod..haha).

Part of it is the opportunity and part of it is the interest. I did chores around the yard when growing up. My family lived for a few years with my grandfather who had a rather large garden with a few orchard trees. I grew up with it to some extent and developed and interest early.

I think gardening will come around again to the younger generation as more people realize it’s benefits. For those who have the interest it may be a lack of opportunity and for those without interest they just don’t realize what they’ve been missing!

A little background:

Gardening is my hobby that has gotten out of control and developed into a business, which I am trying desperately to keep fun. When I am not gardening and selling my plants, I substitute teach during the school year. I ejected from the 8 – 5 corporate life in a large metro area shortly after the 9/11 horrors. I came from a rural area, to which I decided to return.

So why aren’t younger people gardening?

A lot of different reasons, but they boil down to time.

Gardening and appreciation of plants is something that was passed along by our parents and grandparents. As people’s jobs have departed from agrarian beginnings and people work in jobs requiring intense specialization that have also repaid people in high disposable incomes everyone is buying it (food, flowers, landscaping, colorpots) rather than growing it. And disposable income brings with it disposable thinking.

I think with the coming Green Wave, returning to ideas of edible landscaping, learning to rejuvenate overgrown plans, composting in our yards, using native plants, providing rain gardens to contain run-off, using gray water, and shelter belts are all going to be better understood by the younger generation of gardeners to be.

I often sell plants at farm markets and craft fairs and something I see is younger people want to garden, but they have a lot of questions about the plants that appeal to them. They want to learn, but aren’t getting it from the big box stores. They are also bereft not having parents or even grandparents who are gardeners. They haven’t absorbed agrarian living through osmosis.

As any gardener knows, even after gardening 20 years, a gardener is at the beginning of their personal learning curve. Every gardener has something to share, knowledge, plants, techniques. We need to reach out to our children, neighbors.

To borrow from the literacy people… “Each one teach one!”