Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 14, 1995 TAG: 9505160105
SECTION: HOMES PAGE: E-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARTY HAIR KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The once-genteel field of gardening magazines is growing rowdy as new entries pop onto the scene, trailing advertisers who sniff a mother lode of free-spending baby boomers.
Meredith Corp. has a new magazine called home garden. Publisher Conde Nast has announced plans to revive House & Garden next year.
The restyled Garden Design is aiming for the well-off, leading edge of boomers.
Hearst's 2-year-old Country Living Gardener, spun off from its Country Living magazine, is going from two to four issues a year.
From Great Britain comes Gardens Illustrated, a two-year-old bimonthly that is available on U.S. newsstands at $6.95 an issue or by subscription for $50 a year. Two thousand gardeners in the United States have subscribed so far.
And, looking toward the enthusiastic and perhaps new gardener seeking step-by-step tips, Garden Gate is another new magazine with a big difference: no ads.
Even veteran magazines are basking in the craving for gardening information - an interest that most observers predict will be around for a while.
``It's such a hot and trendy topic, and there are good reasons for that,'' says Thomas Cooper, editor of the 90-year-old Horticulture magazine. ``This is not a pet rock issue.''
In the past, garden magazines - including Horticulture and Organic Gardening, American Horticulturist, National Gardening and Fine Gardening - have attracted ads mainly for garden-related products, such as tillers, fertilizers and bulbs. It was a somewhat sleepy domain.
The wake-up call came a couple of years ago, when publishers and advertisers realized the market's potential, which continues to grow.
The number of gardening adults has now ballooned to 78 million Americans and they aren't all Mr. Greenjeans.
Fully half fall in a category that advertisers love - the baby boomers. Entrenched in the cult of consumerism, these are readers whose wallets can well support their hobbies.
Previously, advertisers had been a little skeptical of just who the magazine-reading gardeners were and, more importantly from their standpoint, just what these gardeners would buy.
The answer is: They buy everything, according to Doug Jimerson, editor-in-chief of the new magazine called home garden.
``People may garden but they also buy watches and cars. They have a life. This is not the little old lady in tennis shoes who hasn't bought anything in 20 years,'' says Jimerson.
So now, on pages facing articles describing do-it-yourself water gardens or tracing the history of the garden bench, some new magazines are sporting ads for Waterford crystal, Andersen windows, Godiva chocolates and Range Rovers.
With more ads come more magazines - nine new gardening magazines in 1993 (the same year, to put it in some perspective, that there were also four new magazines on electronics and 95 new magazines on sex, according to an industry guide).
Last year, at least two more gardening magazines hit the stands - the bimonthly Garden Design from Meigher Communications, and Rodale Press' onetime newsstand sale of Organic Flower Gardening.
Already in 1995 there are at least two more new publications - home garden and Garden Gate.
``The competition is intense,'' acknowledges Nina Williams, editor of Country Living Gardener. ``Several publishers jumped on the bandwagon about the same time because everybody sensed this enormous wave going on around the country.''
Predictably, Mike McGrath is not impressed with many newcomers. He is editor of the 53-year-old Organic Gardening magazine - which, with 800,000 paid subscribers, is, he says, the largest circulation gardening magazine in the country.
McGrath brands much of the new competition's yuppie-targeted editorial content as superfluous, its positioning for advertisers as misguided.
However, he says, skyrocketing paper costs rather than content will get the blame if - or when, in his view - the new magazines fail.
``They'll say, `It wasn't the eight pages of watering can photos, it was the paper prices,''' McGrath says.
However, McGrath doesn't disagree with the new magazines' take on gardening demographics. A survey released last month and sponsored by his own magazine shows that many gardeners are in their 30s, 40s and early 50s, people who are settled in their houses and cars and jobs and now are turning to the soil for solace and pleasure.
``They're correct in sensing people do want a return to getting their hands dirty,'' says McGrath. ``But they're treating it so distantly'' - almost as if, he says, the articles are ``directed to landscapers and gardeners who work for them. ... Distant is one thing we're not.''
OG is applying its no-nonsense approach to its new Organic Flower Gardening magazine - which has come out only a couple of times, and only at newsstands. It will begin selling the magazine by subscription next year.
Jimerson of home garden magazine agrees that readers want a user-friendly approach. With its lower case name (Jimerson says it looks distinctive and friendly), home garden came out in February as the only strictly gardening entry of the Meredith Corp., which also produces Better Homes & Gardens (now with an optional eight-page gardening insert for readers who request it).
``One problem with some gardening magazines out there, they're a little off-putting,'' says Jimerson. ``Unless you speak Latin fluently or are an experienced master gardener, they're a little scary.''
He aims for readers - mostly women, mostly boomers, mostly college grads - who are passionate about plants ``but don't spend every waking moment tilling the soil.'' Jimerson thinks they have related interests in cooking, travel and antiques and a similar disinterest in Latin plant names.
He suspects they are intrigued by how-to, accessory-type stories, such as the May/June feature on six ways to plant a strawberry jar.
Hearst, another publishing giant, is increasing the frequency of its Country Living Gardener magazine. With five issues so far, circulation is 500,000. ``Visions of everyday paradise'' is how editor Nina Williams describes its editorial theme.
Compared to some established gardening magazines, Country Living Gardener is going for an overview, she says.
``Horticulture and Fine Gardening tend to be documentary, to come up close to different aspects of people's gardens. ... What we're trying to do is show what individuals have accomplished in the totality of their gardens,'' she says.
In contrast to country, the reincarnated Garden Design magazine emphasizes sophistication; ``Zen and the Art of Gardening'' was a headline on a cover last summer.
Formerly the sedate publication of the American Society of Landscape Architects, Garden Design was purchased by Meigher Communications, which hired former Metropolitan Home visionary Dorothy Kalins as editor.
The redesigned bimonthly, which now has a circulation of 175,000, seeks high-end readers. Its median reader age is 43 and household income is $71,000.
``We see ourselves as being aimed at the leading edge of the baby boom,'' whose members are ``discovering or rediscovering the backyard as a place for personal renewal,'' says Douglas Brenner, executive editor of Garden Design.
He believes his readers have a strong sense of personal style and ``they are as eager to learn about that [gardening] as they have been about everything else in their lives. They desire to be experts at anything they do.'' Garden Design's ads for garden-related products are grouped in a special section called ``The Green Market.''
In contrast, there are no ads in the new magazine called Garden Gate. Editor-in-chief Todd Steadman says his new bimonthly's no-ad format is dictated by its publisher, Woodsmith Corp. Garden Gate is supported by its subscriptions - they expect to have 200,000 paid subscriptions by the end of June, Steadman says.
But recognizing that many readers like the information in ads, Garden Gate puts source lists in every story. Another distinguishing feature of the magazine is the personal, first-person style of its articles.
by CNB