Category: gardening

Busy millennials are turning to gardening to alleviate stress levels, feeding a growing online nursery industry.

With no time to go to the nursery down the road, young green thumbs have been buying their hybrid tea roses over the net.

The annual Gardening Enthusiast Association survey revealed that over one third of gardeners are millennials. Over half of millennial gardeners exclusively purchase their gardening needs online, the survey found.

Follow-up interviews with a group of young gardeners who participated in the survey found that top reasons for gardening include relaxation and having a sense of accomplishment.

Hobby gardeners have been obtaining not just easily shipped seeds but also entire plants and trees, which are sent by courier.

Mike Paxton, a 29 year old working three jobs in hospitality, says he swapped video games for gardening and improved his life.

“Gaming made me angry, but gardening makes me relaxed,” he says.

“Feeling the dirt with your bare hands is a spiritual experience, it makes me feel connected and grounded. I am at one with my plants. Now, I tend to my garden once a week or I start to feel too stressed out.”

Some millennials, living with their parents, tend to the garden in lieu of paying board.

This is the situation for Daniel Phillips, a 32 year old between jobs and living with his mother.

“I took up gardening because my mum said I never do anything,” he says.

“Well, now she gets to enjoy looking at the weeping roses every day. I really feel like I’m getting something done.”

The interviews also found that millennials favour the inclusion of practical greenery in their gardens.

A trend was away from plants and towards trees- fruit and nut bearing trees were most prized for bringing fresh produce literally into gardeners’ backyards.

There is a new guy at work that everyone has gone crazy over. I personally do not get it. He is average looking and he often makes jokes that are just plain old not-funny. Anyway, he has been moved to my department and I am in charge of his training this week. Turns out he is a fellow botany enthusiast and we actually have a lot in common when it comes to our green thumbs.

We compared climbing roses strategies, having both recently installed some to cover up shady spots in our gardens. He went for an agapanthus midnight cascade whereas I went for the agapanthus diamond cascade. Anyway, after our fairly public bonding session everyone was teasing me saying that I am obviously crushing on the new guy, when actually I was the only one who wasn’t. I mean sure he was good looking, but all I honestly cared about were the flowers. I think he took our shared love of flowers as confirmation that we should be together forever because the next day he brought me the most insane bunch of flowers that he had grown in his garden including, lilies, brindabella roses and of course, agapanthus. I was of course flattered but I felt like I had to stand by my stance as the one who doesn’t see it. I reluctantly agreed to go for dinner with him but only when he agreed to stop lecturing me on agapanthus agapetite.  

Of course, everyone found out and is now taunting me that I had been pining for him all along. Oh well, it’s rare to meet someone that knows their kniphofia from their eremurus so I am going to give him a chance. I told the girls I only agreed to go out with him so they would all shut up but of course they are picking out china patterns already. We certainly know what flowers we’d have. I guess if it works out with this guy we’d have the most amazing garden on the street.