Why we’re turning to gardening at a record pace
Saturday, the first day of spring, kicks off the unofficial national gardening holiday everywhere in the northern hemisphere. In the U.S., gardeners are celebrating riotously.
For the largely quiet home gardening business, this year started with a bang — no, an explosion. On the heels of 2020, a breakthrough year for seed buying, 2021 has already produced sales unprecedented in our company’s 145-year history.
Triggered by an ever-expanding population of new gardeners, the surging seed demand is not evidence of a speculative craze, like tulipomania or tech stocks. To invert Alan Greenspan’s phrase, the tsunami of seed buying reflects “rational exuberance.”
In addition to offering outsized nutrition, flavor, fragrance and beauty, seeds are exceptionally lucrative, delivering seed-to-vine-ripened produce values that would be the envy of Wall Street.
The coronavirus, confining restless Americans at home, afforded ample time to gaze out the picture window upon a monochrome vista of uniform lawns — the kind of vacuum nature abhors.
Seemingly at once, the view became a vision, and millions of Americans had a collective aha moment, prompting a newfound urge to grow backyard Edens abounding with life.
For the first time in recent history, the American public turned away from their devices and screens and dismounted the digital hamster wheel.
The petals of our collective unconscious were ruffled by the menace of COVID-19, stirring our souls very deeply. We returned to the primeval
quest for safety and security to ensure our survival and that of both our species and our families.
Gardens first took root 11,000 years ago, give or take a millennium, when pioneering nomadic hunter-gatherers put down roots to create settled communities. In so doing, they established the first planned conversion of solar radiation to human metabolic energy.
Before the domestication of plants, people’s lives were guided by the migration of animals, the prey that
supplied meat for sustenance, fur and hide for covering and warmth, and bone for tools. One drawback of this endless hunt: wild beasts in turn regarded humans as enticing, nourishing entrees.
Once people followed the example of plants, stayed put and produced their own sustenance, civilization burst into bloom. By planting gardens, we humans were at last able to focus better on ourselves and each other.
With a more certain and abundant food supply, we could devote the
energy and time expended on hunting and gathering to agriculture and creating communities with shelter and protection, civic and cultural life, specialized crafts and trades. The rest is history.
Such ancient moments are alive in us today. New and seasoned gardeners are sowing, growing and harvesting the widest gamut of vegetables, fruits and grains as never before. Indeed, this year the unparalleled number of first-time Burpee customers — most having never gardened — exceeds that of our returning ones.
The coronavirus has rendered us less like animals and more like plants. We are changing from hyperactively texting online vagabonds to gardenbound locals, growing a fresh food supply on our own terra firma. By partnering with plants (the genesis of life and civilization), and water (the solvent of creation), we rediscover both our roots and ourselves. Green peace.
Ever more verdantly, one day we may create artificial chlorophyll-based energy, perpetually renewable with zero emissions — the holy grail of solar panels. At research laboratories such as the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis at California Institute of Technology, scientists are using only sunlight, water and carbon dioxide in an attempt to produce unlimited waves of clean energy.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, please take note: With emission-free fuel and electrical energy based on the model of living plants producing their own food, “green” will never be a better deal. Domesticating photosynthesis would be biomimicry on such a profound level that it would make artificial intelligence seem puerile.
Today, we are experiencing a rebirth and reprise of the most remarkable cultural change in history: the emergence of garden-centered communities. We are seeing and learning plants’ seemingly endless lessons and thereby glimpsing more deeply into both the universe and ourselves.
This year’s gardening revolution marks a significant transition — much like Saturday’s equinox, when day surpasses night and, however riotously, spring begins.
Let the sunshine in.