Googling Garden Trends

It is a half past a few days after the first of the year. Most of the United States has created one of 3 resolutions, lose weight, get organized, get laid… erm… I mean find Mr./Mrs. Right. But us gardeners? We scoff at such paltry goals. We have grander plans, plans that involve taking over the world!!! Wa-ha-ha-ha!!!

Oh, sorry, had an Animaniacs moment there.

So maybe we don’t dream of taking over the world, but we do dream of taking over the earth, at least the earth contained in our garden. How do I know this (other than driving impulses that direct me now)? The Great Google told me of course. Google Trends tells us all.

What!?!? You have never heard of Google Trends? Oh yeah, I forget that the rest of the world is not internet addicts. But still, Google Trends can be fun for your average web surfer for at least a few minutes.

So let’s start with this little world, the world of garden blogging. So what do we find out from Google Trends about garden blogs? Apparently, they are much more popular in Singapore and Malaysia than here in the US. We Yanks did not really discover garden blogs until 2007. Prior to that, not enough people searched for a garden blog to even register to Google.

Now the term “gardening” shows us some really interesting things. Mainly that once the blush of Christmaka has worn off, we gardeners turn into gardening fiends and we don’t slow down until April. This reveals what we already know. We suffer from cabin fever on cocaine and we turn to the internet for our winter fix. But once the sun shines and sprouts burst, we abandon our web dealers and go for the real thing. If you remember my article on seed catalogs, this trend plays into the reason why you start getting seed catalogs in December. The seed selling world just wants to whip you up into a fine frenzy so they can make more money.

But Hanna, you say, the trend of “gardening” is going down. Obviously this proves what we always said about the decline of gardening. Whose this “we”, kimosabi?

Before you write long diatribes on the end of gardening as we know it, let me show you a few other trends:

• Vegetable Gardening
• Grow Tomatoes
• Grow Basil

There is not necessarily having less gardening, but rather we have gotten more sophisticated in how we search.

An interesting side bar is that herbs get a double spike rather than the single spring spike of search traffic. It seems that the one thing people feel they can’t live without from their garden are those tasty tidbits. When faced with the prospect of having to take a second mortgage on their house so that they can enjoy fresh herbs, it seems that they turn the internet to see how they can stave off this harrowing prospect.

So here we stand on the edge of the gardening season for a new era. The Internet Gardening Season. Gather your catalogs close and read up on all you want to do while you wait for the sun to return.