The Gen Y Gardener?

According to a recent talk I attended, there have been 7 million new gardeners entering our ranks this year.  In a few years, Generation Y (people born between 1977 and 2000) will comprise 47% of the work force.  (We are somewhere much lower than that now.  I can’t find my notes.)  If you listen to the mainstream media, we are portrayed as entitled, philanthropic, in want of instant gratification, constantly asking “Why?” skeptical of authority, in search of mentors, addicted to our mobile communication devices, and more.  Our work ethic is questioned, yet we are accused of being materialistic.

Another talk, the keynote speech at the same conference, couched all of the above in different terms.  This speaker said that Gen Y’s grandparents, who came of age during the Great Depression and World War Two, were in survival mode their entire lives.  Because of what they did, their children were able to have a higher standard of living.  Those children, my generation, are philosophically beyond subsistence (For the most part.  We’ll see how this recession-thing goes), and up in the dream space.

We don’t just want meat.  We want pasture-fed meat.  We don’t just want milk, we want hormone-free milk.  We don’t just want tomatoes, we want organic, locally grown, heirloom tomatoes.  How long will that last?  I don’t know. It depends upon whether we can continue to feed, clothe and house ourselves by working one job apiece.  It depends upon whether the sea levels rise and the oil runs out and different forms of energy are developed and harnessed.  I think it is a definite possibility that we might end up exactly where our grandparents were-merely surviving.

In the Mean Time. . .

How to get us interested in gardening before our lives depend upon it?  (Some would say that our lives already do.)  Well, my favorite comment from this guy, Kelly Norris, was that people who write about gardening, or are in the gardening business, need to focus more on the benefits of the process, less on the end result.  I’d second that.  I was positively giddy to jump out of the car and check on my garden after being away for five days.  I wasn’t expecting big changes, because it is fall, in the south, and my plants are saying “We are D-U-N. Done!”  But, there were little surprises or greetings–my Mexican sage is blooming now.  The giant golden orb spider over the sidewalk is about twice as big as when I left.  My encore azaleas are blooming.

I asked my husband, who is an un-trained gardening fanatic, why he likes to garden.  He’s a seriously enthusiastic hobbyist.  He has Pam Beck’s Best Garden Plants for North Carolina, and keeps it by his bedside, marking the pages of plants he wants.  When he makes a grocery list he puts “plants” at the bottom.  He was thrilled when I told him that I brought home a toad lily from Plant Delights.  He ran and got his book and showed me the post-it on the toad lily page in his book.

He told me “Gardening is soothing.  It keeps me connected with the earth.  It lets me give back to nature’s creatures.”  (We don’t spray pesticides in our yard.)  I said “Are you just saying that because I’m a garden blogger?  Do you really mean it?”  He said that, yes, he did mean it.  He said he also viewed gardening as a bit of a challenge.  If he kills something (which is often), he tries again, with different techniques.  He said he has noticed that it is much different gardening in Wilmington, North Carolina than in Keene Valley, New York, where we lived when we were first married.  He likes learning.  He said nothing about the end result:  buckets of yellow pear tomatoes that he picked, and sat on the counter, and never ate, or lettuce gone to seed, or radishes so pithy they would break a tooth.

For all the talk about how besotted we are with instant gratification, which some interpret to mean “results,” I would tend to agree with my friend and co-hort, Jayme, owner of aHa Modern Living, a cool online garden store.  For us, many of my generation, who work long hours, at often unfulfilling jobs, and on a treadmill to keep up with our parents, rising housing prices and non-existent health care, the EXPERIENCE is the product, just as Kelly Noris said.  We don’t want instant tomatoes, we want to be instantly captivated by the EXPERIENCE of growing tomatoes, or lettuce, or potatoes.  Within that experience, there is room for learning the process, enjoying interesting gardening products, reading cool books and researching online.

Don’t Freak Out!

If you despair that you’ll never interest your child in gardening, or you can’t understand why your niece is more interested in boys than plants, or you won’t even ask your granddaughter to go cherry picking with you because you think she’ll say no, think again.  Think about how to present the gardening activity as an adventure, instead of a chore.  Entertainment instead of work.  Come at it from the standpoint of something interesting to do, rather than something nice to get.  Then, you’ll get results.