Gardening
Not just for older ladies, and not just about digging in the dirt.
Hellooooo everybody! I was gardening yesterday which is why I’m sending this today. ☺️ I hope everyone has a great week.
Gardening 👩🏼🌾
It’s that time of year!!! This is the weekend to start planting in Raleigh based on the gardening zone we’re in.
Gardening has become a newfound passion of mine over the past four years ever since we moved into our first house, whose previous owner had quite a green thumb. We’ve got a peach tree, a fig tree, an apple tree and a blackberry bush in our front yard and two garden beds in the backyard that happened to be growing strawberries upon our arrival.
I will save the story of our beagle finding baby bunnies 🐰 nesting in between 🍓strawberries and 🥕 carrots for another day (1. how opportunistic of the bunnies and 2. luckily no bunnies were harmed thank goodness) but the point is that gardening opens up your world to big adventures, even in small spaces.
The feeling of growing food, picking produce from your own yard, and then using it in a dish fills me with this sense of pride that is hard to replicate, and it makes me question—should we just move to a farm and go old school? Milk cows, raise chickens, churn our own butter, grow our food, and throw lavish dinner parties where you eat and talk for hours?! Sign me up. Maybe minus the churning your own butter part.
One lesson I’ve learned in life is that the harder you work for something the more you appreciate it. The same is true with gardening. I appreciate my cherry tomatoes WAY more when I pick them off the vine than when I just drop them in my grocery cart.
Gardening has been one big experiment for me, growing new things each season and seeing what works. In the past, I’ve grown shishito peppers, beefsteak tomatoes, okra, butter lettuce, cherry tomatoes, Brussels sprouts, a beaucoup of basil, sweet potatoes, and other things I’m forgetting. There have been a lot of fails, and some wins, but that’s what’s exciting about it—it’s not about the output exactly, but about the process (insert a metaphor about life here).
A lot of my friends and neighbors have gardens so then I was curious if this is just a southern thing or if people are gardening all over?
Let’s dig into the data. A few notes on the sources: there are not a ton of great reports on the gardening industry itself as gardening is often lumped with Lawn, which is quite expansive (Statista report here). This 2025 Axiom Gardening report is helpful but you have to read it with a close eye because 1. it’s self-reported and 2. it doesn’t actually give a lot of overarching stats, just YoY change in stats. If you’re an IGC (Independent Garden Center), this report is for you. This Bigger Garden report is helpful, just note it’s from 2023.
Around 55% of American households garden, totaling around 71.5 million households and over 185 million people according to Bigger Garden.
Gardening is distributed around the country, but is the biggest in the south. This report said it was published in 2021 but there’s data from 2009 on here so take this with a grain of dirt!
Your Green Pal; data from National Gardening Association Gardening is not just for old people. Truthfully, I’ve always thought of gardening as more of an older, retired lady activity. If you go to your local garden club, your suspicions would be validated. Surprisingly, Gen Z and Millennials are planning to spend more time on gardening than Gen X and Boomers (this is not necessarily saying that MORE Gen Z + Millennials are gardening, it is just saying that they plan to garden more than their counterparts plan to garden)
Gardening is not just for girls. FWIW, I’m not talking about lawn care; I’m talking specifically about growing flowers and food. My initial gut reaction would have said that gardening was girly, but the more I’ve talked about gardening with friends the more I’ve realize that lots of guys are into it too.
Nicholas from Louisville shares his perspective: “I’ve never seen it as a girly hobby because my dad was the main gardener in our family growing up. Plus you get to dig in the dirt and that’s pretty masculine in my opinion! I think there’s a lot of activities like cooking and gardening that used to be thought of as women’s activities that a lot of my male friends are picking up. I’m the primary cook in my house, and same for a lot of my friends as well. I also am not a fan of gender norms— I want to surround my daughter with trucks as much as baby dolls. I think it’s important to pursue your interests regardless of the societal norms of gender.”
This Reddit thread asks the same: “How many men are the gardeners of their home?” You’ll see many stories of men talking about how people are surprised that they are the ones to tend to their garden, not their wives.
This YouTube channel called Epic Gardening has 3.7M subscribers and are two dudes who chat about all things gardening.
Why do people like gardening? Gardening has an interesting history and isn’t just something people started doing during covid. There are also many motivations for gardening outside of the obvious reasons of growing food and flowers.
Gardening as an act of activism: If you look into the history of gardening and garden clubs, women started their own garden clubs because the existing ones restricted them from joining. “The Garden Club of America was founded in 1913. While many started with the goal of exchanging information and cuttings, they soon adopted larger missions, which indelibly shaped the American landscape.”
Gardening as an act of patriotism: During WWII, women, children, and men who weren’t in the war were encouraged to create Victory Gardens in order to “increase the production and consumption of fresh vegetables and fruits by more and better home, school, and community gardens, to the end that we become a stronger and healthier Nation”. Incredibly, by the time the war was over, Victory Gardens had produced between 8-10M tons of food. Dang!
“War Gardens for Victory: Grow Vitamins At Your Kitchen Door.” Poster, National Garden Bureau, c. 1943. Credit: Collection of Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/96507418/). Gardening as a prescription for physical and mental health benefits. The New York Times says “digging holes can be a workout and mood booster all rolled into one” and the Mayo Clinic lists exercise, improved diet, time in nature, social connection and reduced stress levels. Blue Zone, the show on Netflix about people who live to 100+, talks about how it is such a great hobby for older people especially because of how physical it is. People have to get up and down, use their balance and gross and fine motor skills.
Gardening as a salve for the environment: You didn’t think I would go the whole newsletter without talking about pollinators did you?! 🐝 Creating pollinator gardens that are designed for bees to pollinate can help create climate resiliency.
Gardening as philanthropy: Trust for Public Land’s 2022 survey found that community gardens in parks have increased 44% since 2012. Community gardens can improve food security in rural and urban areas, is a way to bring community together, and create a beautiful green space in your neighborhood.
Gardening as a form of meditation. Ali from Portland says that it makes her feel grounded: “I love the serenity of working in my garden, seeing the evolution of my plants, and enjoying my harvest. It may be one of my favorite things to see bees pollinating the flowers and knowing you are contributing to our ecosystem. Living in a city, my garden really grounds me and makes me realize you can slow down even when life feels fast.”
Gardening as a learning opportunity. Emily from Raleigh talks about how it’s therapeutic a great learning opportunity: “I find gardening to be therapeutic, rewarding while also challenging. I love watching my plants go from something tiny like a clipping or a starter vegetable from the farmer’s market to growing bigger. I still get a little spark of joy when I first see a new leaf about to kick out. But of course that’s not always the case and sometimes they struggle with too much/too little light or water, or get a pest, and then I’m trying to learn something new about how to get it back on the right track. There are endless things to learn!
How can marketers ripen their plans? If I was to align with this passion point as a marketer, here’s how I would do it.
April campaign timing: Given gardening is seasonal, April is the peak time of year people are looking for information, as you can see from Google Trends YouTube search spikes in the past decade.
Media mix should be based on what your audience consumers, but should likely include a mix of Reddit, YouTube, and Tiktok, along with a mix of magazines like Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, and Flower Mag:
The subreddit r/gardening has 6.8M members and is in the top 1% in size for communities on Reddit. People go here for information sharing and troubleshooting.
TikTok’s #gardening is quite big as well. People are using TikTok for aesthetics and flexing about their food and flowers.
YouTube is the #1 most important social platform people go to learn about new plants and gardening supplies
A few thought starter ideas/seeds. To be honest I don’t see a lot of brands activating in the gardening space, so think there is a big opportunity.
Home Depot could offer gardening classes or how to build a garden box
Tuckernuck or Pinterest could curate clothing and gear for gardeners via gift guides
Anthropologie could collab with Martha Stewart to come out with some cute and functional gardening gloves, aprons, and shears.
Food brands like Food52 or restaurant brands like OpenTable or Toast could host dinner parties in top cities could work with local chefs to have a garden themed dinner party sourcing food from local gardens.
Sur La Table or Williams Sonoma could partner with Food x Gardening icons like Ina Garten and Monty Don to create a social series where Ina and Monty use the brand’s ingredients and cooking products. Can I please work on this, Ina is my idol. 🤩
Local companies like Real Estate Groups or libraries could launch their own community garden or sponsor one
What does this all mean? Gardening is much more than just digging in the dirt. It’s a way to stay healthy, bond communities, resist climate change, and create beauty in your corner of the world. 💛 This is a huge passion for around half of the population and there are a bounty of opportunities for your brand to harvest.
Dinner Party Fodder
Tasty tidbits to talk about. 😋
Trend of the week: Chaos gardening!
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserRecipe of the week: Every Sunday we have salmon, broccoli, and shishito peppers for dinner. When we use shishitos from the garden it just hits differently! Put oil in a pan and roast for 12-15 minutes on medium heat until they are blistered. Add salt and squeeze some lemon on top and voila! Trader Joes also sells them in case you’re interested.
Follow of the week: Toddlers chatting. I lol so hard every time I watch these videos. TBH, it does give me a different perspective and a bit more empathy when my toddler does something completely erratic.
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Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserArticle of the week: CEOs are the new influencers…on LinkedIn. Thank you Joel (again!) for sharing this article with me. I feel like I’m beating a dead horse on this topic but there has been a fundamental shift in 1. How people are using LinkedIn 2. How a company or exec (or a normal person) can show up on the platform to create some sort of outcome. Whether it’s raising awareness about your company, giving people a real look into what it’s like working there, or establishing yourself as a thought leader, LinkedIn is a major whitespace opportunity for a lot of different reasons.
Update of the week: LinkedIn just announced trending videos are being added to the platform. This will give brands and people the opportunity to add a video of their own to try in the hopes of getting surfaced on the main tab which = a LOT of impressions. My video that was surfaced there hit 1.8M imps, which is quite high for LinkedIn.
Flowers of the week: Everythingggg is in bloom in Raleigh. It’s the best time of year!
Garden of the week: My FAV garden is called The Juniper Botanical Garden and it has an open weekend in May. Walter Magazine just did a big spread on this garden. HIGHLY recommend.
If you liked this edition, forward to a marketer you know!
xx,
🐝 Michelle