On Wed, 8 Jun 2011 09:01:10 +0100, "David WE Roberts"
wrote:

pruned

How many urgles (contributors and lurkers) are aged 30 and below?
Is gardening as popular as it always was (the amount of stuff in the sheds
does suggest a strong demand) or are most of the people gardening Baby
Boomers and the next decade or so, who bought houses before the last couple
of the housing booms?

Has the extended period in education (did we ever get to 50% going to
University instead of 5-10%) and the massive availability of electronic
consumer goods and availability of various entertainments given the 30-
generation a whole new set of priorities which render serious gardening a
waste of valuable time?

Just wondering (and not too seriously) :-)

Cheers

Daver

I've always been somewhat forgetful when it comes to birthdays - even
forgetting my own occasionally. I think, over the years, I've
forgotten my birthday about 30 times so now consider myself to be
around 27.

I had my first "garden plot" before I started school - my little bit
with a fence with a gate around it - ok, made with bamboo canes and
string but it was mine. By the time I was 7, I'd acquired a larger
chunk of the garden and by 12 had a decent veg patch going. My mother
said she caught the gardening bug from me, rather than the other way
round. Dad was only interested in football and regularly took me along
to matches; I could never understand what the excitement was all
about.

So clearly I didn't acquite my taste for gardening from my parents,
nor did I follow the lead in becoming a sport fanatic (rugby aside).
Nor did I become a gardener just because houses generally have gardens
attached - I was too young to appreciate that when I started.

I have neighbours whose idea of "gardening" is to get a handyman in
now and again to do whatever. But their kids (all in the 10-12 age
group) are regularly out weeding, cutting the lawn and having a go at
pruning shrubs and, it seems, because they like doing it rather than
because they're told to do it. There's even the occasional argument
over whose turn it is to cut the grass!

So I don't think there's any great social trend here. There are people
of all ages who just like doing something so they do it. And they'll
continue to find time to do it because they like doing it.