Tech companies might snicker at a mere 19% annual growth rate when it comes to measuring consumer behavior. But it sure is a noteworthy uptick when it relates to an age-old pastime that's suddenly growing like... well, like green beans.

I'm talking about home gardening. Nearly 43 million U.S. households are planning to grow their own produce this year, according to the National Gardening Association. Even Michelle Obama is into it; she is the first First Lady to maintain a vegetable garden at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt.

To understand what's driving this trend, I turned to Pattie Baker, an Atlanta mom, community activist, and businesswoman who pens a blog titled FoodShed Planet, about nurturing sustainability close to home and around the world.

Here's her take on the movement:

"Why are more and more moms gardening? It helps put the very highest quality food at the most affordable price on your family’s table. It gives you a classroom right outside your kitchen door where I’ve yet to find a school lesson that can’t be applied. It helps you build a bridge between generations, from heirloom crops from the days of Victory Gardens (and before!) to eco-literacy skills for our children’s future. It connects you with local and global communities. And it gives you and your children the power of positive stewardship over a small patch of earth, which is a leadership lesson these children will never forget.

Personally speaking, gardening has changed me. And this surge of growth in gardening is causing other moms like me to change as well. It is giving us a personal power to make a measurable difference by voting with our dollars three times a day with the food we choose to eat, and dropping us down a bigger rabbit hole to a broader understanding of sustainability. Savvy marketers would be wise to realize that these eco-conscious moms are connected, well-informed, and willing to support the companies that prove their trustworthiness and provide the products and services that meet increasingly discriminating demands about triple-bottom-line sustainability."

Food for thought that I, for one, am intrigued by. Not only am I actually considering transforming a small patch of my own suburban lawn into a garden -- despite my proven "black thumb" and our neighborhood's veggie-loving squirrel population -- but I'm curious to see what companies will recognize, celebrate, and support this movement. Maternal Instinct's client Easy Bloom is one, for sure. But who else?

Labels: eco-conscious moms, home gardening, michelle obama

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