Understanding Demographic Variation in Motivations for Gardening

Gardening offers a fascinating experience as an activity with a degree of universality that transcends differing backgrounds through contact with nature and a first-hand viewing of the cycle of life. Adults garden for many reasons including physical health and exercise, mental health, recreation, creativity, intellectual expansion, friendship, produce quality and nutrition, self-expression/self-fulfillment, cost and convenience and spiritual reasons (including contact with nature). Gardening clearly provides a number of benefits, but the relationship between the benefits gardening provides and the motivation for a person to participate in gardening is unclear. With the recent expansion of the local food movement, motivations for gardening may be changing and may differ between people of different demographic backgrounds. The purpose of this study was to use qualitative analysis to explore reasons gardeners from a variety of demographics participate in gardening activities. The questions developed for this study were intentionally exploratory and left open-ended in order to gather a large variety of responses. Surveys were collected from 177 individuals. Responses were categorized into themes identified through the literature review, the pilot study, and through exploration of the data. Responses could fit into as many categories as were mentioned by the respondents. Responses were categorized by 3 independent coders. Inter-rater reliability was assessed using a two-way mixed, absolute agreement, average measures intraclass correlation to assess the degree that coders provided consistency in their ratings across participants. Themes developed through this survey included “social interaction,” “aesthetics,” “food availability/health/nutrition,” “economics,” “therapeutic,” “environmental benefits,” “nostalgia,” and “personal productivity.” No statistically significant difference was identified between males and females on the frequency each theme was identified. However, age differences were identified.