I’ve been reading Allan Armitage and Joe Lamp’l's takes on the state of gardening. In his post, “Gardening is a Four-Letter Word,” Armitage reflects on how often he hears that “gardening is dead,” that style matters more than substance, that the younger generations who are now at the center of marketing campaigns are just not interested in plants, but, instead, want a plant, any plant, to do a particular job in the landscape. He remarks that “trouble is brewing,” and he’s right.

Joe Lamp’l responded to Armitage by correctly reflecting on the state of gardening on television: good shows can’t get the funding, can’t get the sponsors to keep them afloat. Networks want makeover shows with young, hip hosts who may or may not know anything about gardening. Newspapers are cutting home and garden coverage so heavily that you’re lucky to find a garden column in your local paper. I know my paper of choice, the Detroit Free Press, bought out its garden columnist and hasn’t replaced her.

What these two insights from garden/media pros have shown me is simply this: we need to change the way we do things. Gardening is not dead; it simply needs to be brought into the 21st century.

Where We’ve Gone Wrong

Let’s think about this. The problem is reaching younger consumers—those first-time homeowners and young professionals who just don’t seem interested in gardening. What we do know about these younger consumers is that they tend to be high achievers; they’re better educated than preceding generations, and they are generally described as “over-scheduled”: read, busy. Great, so this just reaffirms what we already know, they don’t have time to garden. But one other characteristic of Gen-Y that seems to get overlooked is this: they are “exceptionally tech-savvy.”

Guess where we find them: on the web. These are the Twitterers, the You-Tubers, the Digg-ers, the Crackberry addicts. Yet, what do we have on the web to offer them? Garden blogs (which, while great, are hardly big enough or flashy enough to reach many of them), a handful of really good garden-related web sites, and a whole lot of badly-designed, badly-written garbage that passes as gardening advice. Um—no wonder they’re turned off to “gardening”?

So why are we worrying about newspapers and television when our target is on the web? It’s because that’s what we’re used to, it’s the way it’s always been done.

A Different Way

Let’s change direction for a moment and look at a couple examples of failed television concepts that became web successes, thanks to the ability to reach this demographic.

Consider Leo Laporte and his online technology network TwiT.tv. Way back when, in the mid to late nineties, Laporte had a few shows on cable. The channel went through a series of transitions, starting out as Zdnet, then TechTV, and now, G4. Somewhere along the line, the powers that be decided that no one wanted to watch some forty-something guy (no matter how congenial he was) tell us how to use technology better. His shows were discontinued. So what did he do? He started doing podcasts, and he grew from a couple of small podcasts to a virtual network of shows. He makes a living at it, too. Colleague Kevin Rose (of Digg fame) also has an online network that shows video podcasts, Revision 3.

Consider an example that is closer to our own situation. Unless your name is Norm, it’s unlikely that anyone will sponsor your woodworking show on television. Yet there are plenty of woodworkers out there looking for instruction, community, and inspiration. Enter Marc Spagnuolo, the Wood Whisperer, who had a singular dream of working full-time as a woodworker, yet couldn’t get by on the sporadic pay. He started a small video podcast about woodworking in 2006, and his life hasn’t been the same since. He makes his living full-time by putting together his podcast and working on the related website and blog. He is sponsored by some of the biggest names in woodworking, including Rockler, Festool, and Powermatic. He’s managed to reach a wide audience, including plenty of those pesky Gen-Yers, simply by meeting them where they live.

What This Tells Us

We need to take a step or ten out of our comfort zone. We need to realize that, for our purposes, newspapers and television are dead. And do you know why? Because at their heart, TV and the papers must cater to the lowest common denominator to survive. Is there any other explanation for why there are so many reality shows on television, yet you can’t find a decent show about horticulture to save your life? Why does every paper I’ve ever read have a gossip section, but not a column about gardening? But the web–the web is never-ending, and there is a place in it for all of us. We might have to give up the comfort of high-production-value shows at first, and I can tell you for sure that we’d have to start a show without sponsorships—they’d come later, after we show them some real numbers, after we prove that we’ve reached Gen-Y on their home turf.

85% of people polled still claim to garden at some level—much higher numbers of aficionados than either technology or woodworking are able to claim. If they can reach their audience, and get those necessary sponsorships, then we can, too. We simply have to leave behind our newspapers, our reliance on television, and the perceived domain of little old ladies in straw hats. It is time to enter the 21st century. If we can’t do that, we have only ourselves to blame for the waning interest in gardening among our younger peers.

Sunday: What we are doing so far, and why it’s not enough.