Just read a recent Horticulture blog post by managing editor Patty Craft asking readers what they can do differently. Give me a minute to gather my thoughts.
I spent years devouring every issue of Horticulture magazine that landed in my mailbox. Now I’m wondering why I don’t read it at all. Yet now that I think of it, I haven’t read Horticulture since I sent a letter to the editor asking him (at the time) why their stories were so literary. One of the first rules in writing is never use a five dollar word when a 50-cent one will do. (Or something like that.) I was tired of pulling out the dictionary just to get through a story about daffodils.
Horticulture magazine has been in publication since 1904. It launched as a trade journal for florists and greenhouse gardeners. In 1981 it was bought by the New Yorker and White Flower Farm and morphed itself into a literary magazine under editor Thomas C. Cooper. The magazine was in sync then with an aging population of garden hobbyists. But that was like, 30 years ago.
Primedia, who also owns Hot Rod magazine, Soap Opera Weekly and Arabian Horse World bought Horticulture in the 1990s. It took a dive. Editor Thomas Fischer didn’t help. He envisioned a magazine that was “no fluff.” (His words) He would bring back the long literary stories and scare off the neophytes new gardeners that sought the simple 5 step how-to.
Horticulture was impossible to read. When I needed a few tips on growing tiarella, I found long, boring treaties on cell structure. The magazine was out of touch with a new generation of gardeners and how they read and learn about gardening.
Browsing their web site today and finally getting around to Craft’s question about what they can do differently –how about start over? There are still those long Fischer-inspired stories about Ketzel Levine’s garden, but no pictures. There is a profile of great garden photographer Clive Nichols and no examples of his work. There remains the the East Coast slant with stories about winterberries and first frosts, yet little fun and even less inspiration.
Here’s my message - gardening is about gardening, not about writing. Find a way to make your readers want to dig the dirt, run to the nursery in muddy shoes for one more miscanthus, plow the lawn to plant lettuces and onions and dream the winter away thinking about spring. You can do that with words, just not the five dollar ones.
Related posts:
- Not happy either with the new Garden Design magazine
- Good garden book for beginners
- From trash to transplant
- Amy Stewart’s Flower Confidential
The main pleasure of a garden is visual - what fun is a magazine that doesn’t show the gardens they are describing? How strange…
Hi Cindy. Thanks for your thoughtful response to our blog question. We always are interested in what readers want from Horticulture, and we hope to also invite new readers into the community.
You’re right that Horticulture’s audience is not just for beginner gardeners, and that they are interested in both the science of gardening (as our tagline proclaims
as well as the artful side of it.
We hope you and your readers will give Horticulture another look. We agree with you that there’s room in our pages for more photos of gorgeous gardens. Last spring we began a redesign of the magazine that’s allowing for more eye candy while providing readers with what they’ve come to expect—thoughtful articles on a variety of gardening topics.
And I, too, was taught that rule about five-dollar words vs. 50-cent words!
Peace on the path,
Patty Craft, managing editor of Horticulture