Kitchen Sink

Friday Fun Poll: Spring Has Sprung and Our Visitors are Digging It

A few weeks ago, spring finally arrived here in most of the United States – and it even seemed to be sticking around for good. That put all of us on the User Experience Research team in a great mood. So, we decided to ask what kind of gardening you do, if you do any at all. Almost all of us on our team do or have done some type of gardening, even if we don’t have a yard. When space is limited, we don’t mind keeping herb gardens, patio gardens, and even elaborate front porch container gardens. (If you want to take the poll, we have an archived version of it here.)

Homes.com visitors are like the rest of the U.S. population in general: we enjoy gardening in our spare time. The poll was answered by 3931 people, 61% of them were searching for homes for sale, while 36% were looking at rentals. 25% of our survey respondents said that they don’t keep a garden (Gardening? No thanks!), while 75% said they keep some kind of garden – everything from vegetables to window sills to containers to patio gardens. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, 68% of the population engages in gardening during their leisure and recreational time. Since the U.S. Census also asked about yard and lawn care, including maintaining trees, more people report gardening activity in the U.S. Census than they did in our poll, which only looked at certain kinds of gardening.

So, how did it all break out? Most people (37%) do or would like to keep a vegetable garden. 23% said they do or would like to keep a flower garden. Coming in pretty far behind was roof top/patio gardening (7%), caring for houseplants (4%), and window sill gardening (1%). Three percent of respondents said they just don’t have a green thumb.

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While the questions on the U.S. Census for 2010 aren’t exactly the same questions we ask in our fun poll, it’s still fun to put the answers of our survey takers in some context. The Census questions are a bit more complicated than our polls, so they capture the fact that people may often have different types of gardens. When it comes to how much time people spend, 29% of the U.S. population care for houseplants, 28% keep a flower garden, and 26% maintain a vegetable garden. A bit further behind were forms of gardening that often take up less space such as container gardening (17%) and herb gardening (15%).

I was pleasantly surprised to learn so many people like to keep some sort of vegetable garden. Apparently, there’s a growing trend to keep practical gardens – to supplement the food budget and to eat garden-fresh foods when possible are just two reasons. In 2009, almost 1/3 of Americans were growing a garden as a source for their vegetables, fruit, berries, and herbs – that’s according to a National Gardening Association and ScottsMiracle-Gro survey conducted by Harris Interactive in 2009.

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What do you think? Did you think this many people like to garden in their leisure and recreational time? What would your answer be? Do you keep only one time of garden, or are you like other Americans who keep at least a couple of different kinds such as vegetable, flower, water, or herb garden? Let us know! We really look forward to getting to know better the very people who use our products.

Enjoy the rest of your spring!

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