Promoting green life and gardening

Survey insights

The nineties were known as the heyday of gardening in New Zealand. Garden retailers flourished, there were several iconic garden shows on national TV and a burgeoning interest from the ‘30 and 40 somethings’. Gardening achieved top ranking when it came to leisure activities amongst New Zealand households.

Fast forward to 2024 and the scenario is very different. There are no New Zealand relevant shows on mainstream channels dedicated to gardening and green spaces. TV has largely been relegated to the endangered list, replaced by content streaming and on demand formats presented by an increasingly fragmented and often unmoderated digital media landscape.

Gardens too have changed. Smaller (or no) green spaces, a decline in home ownership, and urban development which appears to prioritise no-maintenance concrete and intensification over protection of the remaining parks and green spaces. With climate change knocking on the door, (and in some cases barging right on in), it feels urgent that we address the obvious imbalance and bring greenlife and the importance of plants back into the national consciousness.

It seems you overall agree with us. An astounding 61% were very concerned about the environment and greenlife protection, a further 37% were somewhat concerned. This adds to 98% of surveyed readers either very or somewhat concerned about the need to promote and protect greenlife and encourage planting and gardening practices.

Perhaps this is understandable when we are largely preaching to the ‘converted’, however we were importantly seeking your views on what might be the best way to address this need.

Channels of engagement

Over half of our respondents were retired and a further third were ‘empty nesters’ with no children or grown-up children. Around 9% still had children at home.

If you were in your 30’s in the nineties when Maggie ruled supreme as gardening queen, 30 years on you’ll be in your 60’s. So little wonder that bringing back a dedicated TV show got a lot of mentions.

However, many of our readers pointed to the need to address multiple channels including website, social media, school gardening as well as TV style entertainment and content on demand. In fact, 66% of our readers believe that all these channels are now important. When singled out the frontrunners were a TV show (16%) and gardening in schools (12%).

Initiatives with schools and children in terms of gardening education was the most mentioned priority with 182 mentions. Next most mentioned was food security and edible gardening.

Other top priorities were accurate information on ‘how to’ garden and fostering community gardens and networking gardeners. Advocating for green spaces with councils and planners was also a frequently mentioned priority with many heartbreaking examples of lost iconic green spaces and valued trees. Natives and encouraging more use of our indigenous plants was next most mentioned.

The survey’s open-ended question generated a wealth of insights and wonderful ideas. Our sincere thanks to our newsletter readers for your generosity in taking time to think about and respond to this very important issue.

What happens next

The survey responses will be included as part of a process to develop a strategy in the coming years to promote greenlife and gardening in New Zealand relevant to the media landscape we currently face. There is a great deal of work to be done but having input from our gardeners is a great first step.