what is mtrfga? I just googled it and got golf, gaming, and financial planning...

I was just going to ask the same thing about the acronym. But Rifis, the thread you linked was great to read. It encapsulated one of the points I was trying to make about the decline of gardening in the 'what's wrong' thread last night. And it was from 2011.

I think it's "Make This Rose Forum Great Again"! 😂

Susan, I found what you said about the 90s interesting. I was a kid growing up gardening alongside my mom in that decade, and I have such an emotional connection to gardening from that time. All the catalogs, seed starting, trips to local nurseries, etc. So for me, there's a purely nostalgic connection to that period, but it's interesting to hear from you that it was a a time when interest in gardening peaked. I'm a professional day dreamer, so I've somtimes thought about what it'd be like to try to recreate a 90s garden. There'd have to be lots of impatiens, I think! And a big Boston fern on the front porch. ;)

Thanks, Windowsill! I was truly at a loss!

In the 90s I was in grad school and trying to grow roses on my apartment balcony, and then got permission to plant roses in the little plots of ground near the stairs to my apartment. then had to move for a new job and my poor roses were on a hot concrete patio with very little direct sunlight. So the 90s were not my decade for gardening! But I remember helping my parents and my grandmother in the yard when I was younger. I remember my grandmother introducing me to all of her roses, but I hadn't caught the bug yet. I wish I could travel back in time and share her joy and excitement when they were doing well. Oh...opportunities missed. How wonderful you had such quality time in the garden with your mom!

I'm not sure if the 90s were the peak for general interest in gardening, but it was pretty popular. I started gardening at age 15 around 1971, and at the time, I subscribed to the magazine Organic Gardening and Farming. I bought a book called Grow Your Own by Jeannie Darlington. I'm about to go to bed, but I'll try to find it tomorrow and post a pic of the cover... you'll laugh. Anyway, I think that the boomers who made a lot of money in the 80s started families and got into gardening as part of their lifestyle, if they weren't already into it as hippies. There was a big infrastructure of print media supporting it. Growing up in the 60s, my aunt tended a small flower garden in the back yard of our fourplex. I remember going to the nursery with her (on the bus!) when she bought plants.

Just a perspective of someone who is a ”millenial”, I think growing roses is still popular but that interest and where people spend money has gone to two extremes, one being landscape, no maintenance types like Knock Out and Drift and the other end to David Austin, Meilland, and Kordes. Those breeders roses I feel are always in super high demand because they have a look people enjoy. I watch a lot of rose society type videos and feel older generation had a higher appreciation for classic hybrid teas and OGRs. When I go to my local nursery, they only sell Drift, maybe some Bloomables but that is Meilland. Only place I know to get OGRs is the annual plant sale from the rose society itself.

On a related note, I also feel young people in general have less space to garden or don’t have a suburban type home so they gravitate to growing houseplants which is very in vogue right now. I’m very grateful to have the space to grow roses, trees, you name it.

Knightsgambit -- I'm a "millennial" as well (technically an "old millennial") and that seems spot-on to me. I can attest to having no property for a garden. I haven't really been able to get excited about most types of houseplants, though I like some. Hence, my indoor roses.

I feel like in the U.S. we have such a huge culture of landscaping, as you say, rather than gardening. When I went to England a long time ago, I was so struck by how gardening culture permeated every little backyard, postage-stamp-sized front yard, etc.

Deborah, I love your story about growing roses in pots in grad school and then getting permission to plant them. It sounds like exactly something I'd want to do. And Susan, what you describe as boomers' interest in gardening aligns well with my former-hippie parents (minus the 1980s money, unfortunately!). I think my parents got into raising goats, gardening, etc., as a sort of reaction to the canned food and cookie-cutter yards of their 1950s-60s upbringings.

Deborah/Susan -- It's interesting to hear when you got bitten by the gardening bug. For me, despite growing up with gardening in my life, I didn't really become obsessed with gardening until I had my own balcony for a few years c. 2010. What kills me is that I only grew Queen Elizabeth! I'd be packing that balcony with roses now...

I got lazy, so decided to find a good pic of the cover of the book online that would look even better than my own pic. This is a totally legit ebay site, so it's safe to click on. The pic is prominently featured.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/204997790851

BTW, it's a wonderful book, and very charming... talk about a time capsule from 55 years ago :-D

Susan -- that cover photo! What a snapshot of a period in time.

Wow!!!! I'm a GenXer born to Boomer parents - neither of them hippies. That cover to me looks so...**alternative** !!! Knightsgambit - good points. I thought gardening became huge again during covid lockdown. I blame covid and social media for the craziness in roses right now -- apart from all the other challenges for any plant business -- I think the craze for new and different and exclusive and novel and amazing is fed by social media and the "influencers" and that creates more demand and then we got all these backyard growers who can harness media to sell to fulfill all these desires and then GRF sees how much Etsy sellers are selling little tiny roses for, so she can charge even more...and on and on. I'm so sad that many local nurseries (beyond roses) are going out of business. The kids don't have the passion the parents had and can sell the land to real estate developers and make a fortune...Wow. I'm really on a tear. I'll probably read this tomorrow and spot typos and holes in my logic. Whatever. I'm pressing submit and going to bed! Maybe I'll dream I'm walking windowsill's dog in the park... :-)

Love this!