Absolutely agree! I've been a keen gardener since childhood, driving my dad nuts by planting completely inappropriate plants in his garden then forbidding him to dig them up. Both of us couldn't wait for me to have my own garden!

I didn't get the gardening bug fully until I was in my thirties and a home-owner, so I'm a late developer in that respect. My mother was incredibly passionate about gardening when I was a child, but in a sense I distanced myself from that, perhaps because I saw it as 'Mum's interest' - she definitely would not have stood for any plants in inappropriate places in HER garden! I started to have an interest in culinary herbs when I left home and was renting, but I needed a little bit of green space to make my mark on before I finally realised I wasn't so very different from Mum after all!

Gardening takes quite a long time to 'pay off'; perhaps that is off-putting for the instant-gratification generation with an attention span that has been conditioned by soundbites and ultra-fast tv shows.
There's hope though, wait till they settle down and have children: I got into gardening when we bought our first own flat - I had one child, another on the way, and wanted a place with a good-size garden for the little ones to play in. As I had to stay with them for supervision, gardening sort of crept up on me - something for me to do while they made mud pies, and a way of making the garden pleasant for me too.

I agree, gardening is not a short term hobby, you need stability to see it all through and older people tend to have that. I remember I loved gardening even when I lived in grotty rented accommodation, though.

Hi its not totally dead with the younger generations. I am 23 and have an absolute passion for plants expecially the rare and exotic i have an allotment and a reasonably sized garden I can think of nothing better than on a hot summer day working on the allotment then coming home and sitting under my bananas with an ice cold drink looking at an explosion of ginger flowers.
your never too young to enjoy the finer things in life

I have been gardening since I was about 10, so I was a young gardener once!

How is it then, that whenever I go to gardening clubs/events I seem to be the youngest person there? Where are all these young gardeners? (Being devil's advocate here.)

I think Anyanka is quite right - as one gets older, one is able to cope with the idea that something might take a year or two to come to fruition (or flower, for that matter).
When I was 20, the idea that something would take more than six months to complete was totally unacceptable. 40 years on, there is a different attitude - "What's five years? They'll go by before you know it ..."

Chris

I'm inclined to agree, to a certain extent.. I've only really been a plant nerd since I've had a proper garden to attack. However, I've always been into succulents/cacti etc, and a lot of people on my horti course at college seem to be in their 20s still..

(Best thing is, I qualify for RHS under-25s membership, which is £16 a year. Bargain! :D)
Melanie

i came to gardening fairly late - 30 but all my children - 27, 22 and 18 are keen gardeners - they have grown up with it and all got infected - mind you, I was canny, saving the best jobs such as digging the potatoes, strimming (for the boys) so I guess the torch must always be passed on somewhere.

Yes, I have vivid memories of my grandmother spending hours gardening every evening and getting me to jump on the snails!
As a teacher, I'm becoming aware that some young children (6 years +) are very keen on plants and gardens, I guess it is a question of being brought up with it. I suppose one growing season is only 6 months so is a small enough unit of time for even a young child to notice and enjoy huge changes in the appearance of a plant or garden.

Started my gardening in the 1940's during the war, when the school turned playing fields into vegie plots, I have never looked back, my plot was always full of veg, and still is today.

There's a similar thread to this on the professional gardeners board at the moment.

Apart from the need to be living in the same place for a few years, I think one other thing that tends to make gardening more of an activity for older people is that it can be quite time consuming. My parents' garden looks fantastic because they're able to spend many hours a day on it. With work and children, most of my 'spare' time for the garden is outside of daylight hours.

Interesting comment about gardening club/events. The gardening club in my village does indeed seem to be entirely over-65s. Yet when I visited the botanic garden in Cambridge on Sunday, I would have put the average age as well under 20 (almost everyone had a small child or two in tow). Similarly, when I did my RHS horticulture, most people doing that were in their twenties and thirties.

I'm still waiting for someone to post here that they have no interest in gardening ... should I hold my breath?

I'm 30 something and have been a keen gardener all my life including as a teen and early 20s. I've been to a few gardening clubs but the reasons the members are largely over 65 year old there is probably because the clubs members are often over 65 but I don't think it's just gardening, there are a lot of other hobby clubs where the members tend to be older too.

Think I might just qualify for Saga at 50, but I was only a young 49 last year and still gardening.