{"id":37,"date":"2006-08-29T08:09:21","date_gmt":"2006-08-29T16:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=37"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:33:26","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:33:26","slug":"life-from-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/life-from-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Life From Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gardening is dying.\u00a0 Reports of this sad phenomenon are all over the media.\u00a0 Not long ago, “The Avant Gardener,”\u009d a monthly horticultural newsletter, reported that lawn and garden material and equipment sales have been on the decline for several years.\u00a0 Publishers’ Weekly<\/em>, the publishing industry bible, recently dedicated many pages to a feature on the bottomed-out market for garden books.\u00a0 The<\/em> New York Times<\/em> has cut its garden coverage so dramatically that often during the growing season, the Thursday “House and Home”\u009d section contains only the relatively short “Garden Q&A”\u009d feature.\u00a0 Anne Raver’s fine articles are now far too infrequent.<\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 On the retail front, Heronswood Nursery, a boutique establishment that was one of the finest plant merchandisers in America, was unceremoniously shuttered last month by W. Attlee Burpee, which had purchased Heronswood from its founders only three years ago.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Closer to home, I have seen two of my favorite local nurseries, one large and one small, close during the past year.\u00a0 Both featured interesting plant selections and knowledgeable staff.\u00a0 I know that I am not the only gardener who finds solace trolling the outdoor aisles of a good nursery.\u00a0 That solace has become harder to find.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Why is this happening?\u00a0 Part of the apparent decline probably has to do with the cyclical popularity of various leisure activities.\u00a0 Gardening’s wave crested about eight years ago, when millions of newcomers were attracted to the hobby. \u00a0Garden centers boomed, horticultural publications expanded and new specialty nurseries opened their doors at a great rate.\u00a0 People sought out new and different plants, learned the difference between a lopper and a secateur and installed beds and borders.\u00a0 They bought millions of dollars worth of tools and equipment.\u00a0 Mega-merchandisers like Wal-Mart and Home Depot got into the act in their usual oversized way, providing cheap plants in increasingly greater variety to eager customers from coast to coast.\u00a0 Great English gardener\/writers like Christopher Lloyd, Graham Stuart Thomas and Penelope Hobhouse gained international followings.\u00a0 Closer to home we began to appreciate wonderful American writers like Allen Lacy and Henry Mitchell.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But sometime a few years ago, the bloom departed from the gardening rose.\u00a0 All those new beds and borders required time and attention, and many of the enthusiastic garden novices decided that they wanted to spend less time weeding and mulching and more time entertaining in their outdoor spaces.\u00a0 Demand for plants and equipment declined, which meant fewer advertising and content pages in gardening and shelter publications.\u00a0 Baby boomers with aging backs and knees craved simpler landscapes with easy care plants.\u00a0 Younger gardeners wanted the same undemanding specimens for their small layouts or container gardens.\u00a0 The popular press relegated plants to the role of accent pieces in fashionable “garden rooms”\u009d dominated by giant gas grills and teak furniture.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So are we dirt gardeners going the way of the dinosaur?\u00a0 I think not, and I have solid evidence to back that conviction.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 First of all, by the time the national press reports the demise of anything, the nominally expired fashion or idea is usually already on the rebound.\u00a0 Expecting the major media to be on the cutting edge of a trend is like expecting a bear to dance on a bagel.\u00a0 It is theoretically possible, but highly unlikely.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Second, and more important, I see increasing numbers of plants and flowers everywhere.\u00a0 People are replacing corners of lawns with garden beds, surrounding mature trees with multi-colored hostas and defying suburban convention by putting flowering ornamentals in the front yard.\u00a0 Sales of ultra easy specimens like the Endless Summer\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 hydrangea and the Knock Out\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 series of roses are booming.\u00a0 People will always love flowers, no matter what the pundits say.<\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Many people toy with hobbies, and so, some of those enthusiastic garden novices of the nineties have moved on to scrap booking or knitting or building birdhouses.\u00a0 The real gardeners are as enthusiastic as ever, planning new beds, seeking out new plants and glorying in the process.\u00a0 We are the unchanging nucleus of a group whose numbers rise and fall in cyclical fashion.\u00a0 The Internet helps keep us connected–with each other and with the nurseries that carry the rare daylilies, dwarf conifers and unusual grasses that we crave.\u00a0 The desire to nurture growing things is as persistent as crabgrass. <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So take heart, gardeners, our time is coming again.\u00a0 Soaring energy prices and fears about global warming are making people think “green”\u009d for the first time in at least a decade, and such “green”\u009d thinking inevitably turns many of us towards cultivating our own patches of earth.\u00a0 And, as “The Avant Gardener”\u009d pointed out, the person who buys a Knock Out\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 rose today, may like it so much that he craves an old rose tomorrow.\u00a0 As with all things related to horticulture, the possibilities are endless.\u00a0 If Mark Twain were with us today, he would undoubtedly paraphrase himself and say that reports of gardening’s death are greatly exaggerated.\u00a0 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gardening is dying.\u00a0 Reports of this sad phenomenon are all over the media.\u00a0 Not long ago, “The Avant Gardener,”\u009d a monthly horticultural newsletter, reported that lawn and garden material and equipment sales have been on the decline for several years.\u00a0 Publishers’ Weekly, the publishing industry bible, recently dedicated many pages to a feature on the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1745,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/1745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}