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Nostalgiacore has entered the backyard…
Nostalgiacore Has Entered the Backyard…
The result: granny gardens and a certain flower popping up everywhere. Can you guess which one?
By: Stacy Morrison
Here’s a flashback newsflash: Nostalgiacore (a longing for the recent past; say, the 1990s to 2000s) is surging among the young folk, and Gen Z in particular is aching for all things analog. Trend reports show the impulse branching from TV to tech. Younger generations are rewatching Gilmore Girls end to end, buying Polaroid cameras and film, packing theaters for Twilight’s 20th anniversary release, and choosing flip phones over smart phones.
Part of the interest in reviving pop culture from the past is the implied “comfort” of a less-connected time, idealizing childhoods like those depicted on Stranger Things: all bicycles and high-school dances and life’s mysteries waiting to be solved, instead of offered up in 20-second clips on social media.
What does this have to do with gardens, you might ask? This yearning for a past that you never lived by watching someone else’s unplugged life only gets you so far. That’s why Gen Z and Millennials are digging into new hobbies that can connect them to a simpler time, one without the always-on stresses of the digital age. In other words, step into the garden
Nostalgia makes us dirt nerds
Existential psychologist (yes, that’s a thing) Clay Routledge, author of Past Forward: How Nostalgia Can Help You Live a More Meaningful Life and head of Archbridge Institute’s Human Flourishing Lab, says analog pursuits are a survival strategy. His research has shown that 73% of Gen Z respondents said they are drawn to media, styles, hobbies, or traditions from earlier periods. The rewards of hands-on hobbies — aside from getting offline — are creativity, optimism, and the big one, creating meaning in life.
So it’s no wonder that Gen Z is spending more time digging in the dirt and communing with plants. Today, “cottagecore” and “grandma gardens” top the list of thriving garden trends, with their asymmetric arrays of peonies, hydrangeas, roses, and hollyhocks. It’s not just an aesthetic accident: These are gardens built on the values Gen Z prizes — sustainable, forgiving, and gloriously imperfect.
Meet nostalgiacore’s superstar flower
The poster blossom — make that Polaroid blossom? — of this movement is the dahlia. No flower straddles the line between heirloom and of-the-moment quite like it. Dahlias carry all the old-fashioned signifiers that are as cozy as crochet (another skyrocketing trend). The color palette is heavy on powdery pastels, with names like “Café au Lait” and “Crème de Cassis,” with intense magentas and scarlets spicing things up. The flower heads range from spiky little pompoms to dinner-plate sized blooms, which makes them intensely collectible, in a “gotta plant ‘em all” way. As The Dahlia Mandrew, an Ontario grower with 200,000+ Instagram followers, put it: “I don’t think I could possibly be having more fun than I’m having with these dahlias.”
Another reason for their popularity: They aren’t the most basic of flowers. They take work, patience, and time spent “in the flow.” Which makes the payoff of those magnificent blooms all the sweeter
Living the dahlia lifestyle
Sales of dahlia tubers have been rising steeply in recent years, with demand at Washington state’s Triple Wren Farms being so intense, some dahlia varieties sell out within minutes of becoming available online. This spiraling demand has ratcheted up prices from coast to coast, with rare, collectible tubers (the potato-like root system dahlias sprout from) costing $20, $30, or more a pop versus, say, $10 for something basic.
Beyond taking root in record numbers of home gardens, dahlias are inspiring ever more festivals, pick-your-own events, and other meetups across the country. In Canby, Oregon, the Annual Dahlia Festival covers a 40-acre swath with almost 400 varieties of the blooms, and at Bear Creek Farm in Stanfordville, New York, workshops in dahlia tuber processing, which show how to keep one’s crop going over winter, have been especially popular.
What’s not to love about the way gardeners are glomming onto this “everything old is new again” endeavor? The nostalgiacore garden trend truly comes full circle: it looks backward, it lives forward, and — with a nod to today — these flowers look incredible when shared online.
Do you have a nostalgic garden? Are you growing dahlias? We want to see! Post your photos on Instagram and tag us at @scottsmiraclegro.
About the writer
Stacy Morrison is a writer and brand consultant based in the Hudson Valley and is cofounder and Chief Strategy Officer at Clinton Haworth Collective, a marketing and communications agency. Her gardens are still very much at the center of her life, and she continues to learn from them every season.