Millennials seem to be getting into the idea of growing their own food by gardening. Surveys show that younger people are either gardening, or want to, and it may be because so many celebrities are gardening themselves.
Social media has changed the way people share their lives. Many celebrities, like Oprah and Reese Witherspoon, have actively been sharing their gardening efforts with the whole world. A number of other celebrities have been doing the same, and the apparent results are interesting.
According to a survey conducted by Common Sense Gardening in the UK found that a majority of millennial respondents were growing produce to cook with at home. Respondents between the ages of 22-37 were very positive on growing their own food and focused mostly on vegetables.
Millennials are Gardening
It isn’t difficult to see why 84% of the millennials that participated in the Common Sense Gardening survey are growing their own tomatoes, carrots, strawberries, and potatoes. Food costs have been on the rise, and growing your own produce is a healthy way to cut your food bill.
Some millennials have also ventured out into herb gardening, with around of quarter of the respondents saying they have an herb garden they cultivate for their kitchen. It might be surprising for people who don’t have a lot of experience in the garden, but staple crops like potatoes are very easy to grow.
Celebrities have supported the rising interest in gardening by doing it themselves.
Actress Reese Witherspoon has a garden at home, and she works with her kids to plant and harvest food for her family. Loads of social media posts of her children playing in a lush environment is amazing advertising for a healthier lifestyle, which is appealing to younger people who have time and energy to work outdoors.
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A Positive Influence
It is hard to find a social media platform that isn’t featuring gardening content. The Common Sense Gardening initiative found that millennials are looking to major social media outlets for information and inspiration about how to grow their own gardens.
The social media sphere has been a hotbed for shallow content, but it also seems to be influential in supporting a healthy trend that is putting younger people back in control of what they eat.
According to the Common Sense Gardening initiative, around 50% of millennial respondents said they use YouTube to learn more about gardening. Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest are also go-to outlets for learning more about how to garden.
Gardening Makes Sense
Learning how to garden makes sense for any number of reasons. One of the most important ones is learning how easy it is to grow your own healthy food, and that every single thing you eat doesn’t have to come from a shop of some kind.
Actress Zooey Deschanel insists that she isn’t a gardener, but as a vegetarian, she has learned how to cultivate her own healthy vegetables. She is also working with her former partner to promote ‘Lettuce Grow’, which has a hydroponic vertical gardening system that allows just about anyone to grow their own greens with minimal effort.
A vertical hydroponic growing system isn’t going to be cheap, but if a person eats loads of leafy greens, it may be cheaper than buying them from the market over time. Home produced greens are also far less likely to be contaminated, which is an issue because most greens aren’t cooked.
There are lots of options out there for gardeners at every stage of life, and many forms of gardening are extremely inexpensive. Millennials appear to be learning how rewarding gardening can be, which bodes well for their health and wellbeing.
