Your backyard's superpower: Bonding the generations

For many years, Birgitta Paddack and her husband, Jerry, cultivated a blooming garden on their one-plus-acre property in Ewing, New Jersey.

“We had a huge garden with all sorts of vegetables,” Birgitta said. “We had asparagus growing and raspberry bushes and strawberries. We had everything you can imagine!”

But after Jerry passed away last summer at the age of 88, Birgitta needed some help managing her property, so her daughter Jennifer and son-in-law John Buetow moved in. The couple, who recently retired from careers in the education system, relocated from the Chicago area, where they had raised two now-grown children of their own.

“They’re out there right now working in the garden, weeding and trimming back bushes, so I don’t have to go out in the heat,” Birgitta said on an exceptionally hot summer day. But usually, this newly multi-generational household is outside together, tending to the beds of lilies, peonies and roses, she said. “I love my garden, it’s what keeps me going.”

How many under one roof?

Multi-generational households, like Birgitta’s, are increasingly common these days, a throwback to how people lived and gardened for millennia.

According to a recent study, the number of multi-generational households in the United States quadrupled between 1971 and 2021. That means that nearly 60 million people, or 18%, of the U.S. population now lives in a multi-generational household, which is defined by the Pew Research Center as “including two or more adult generations (with adults mainly ages 25 or older) or a ‘skipped generation,’ which consists of grandparents and their grandchildren younger than 25.”

Reasons for this trend include the need for caretaking of older family members, as in Birgitta’s case, as well as intensifying economic pressures due to inflation and skyrocketing housing costs. It’s also becoming increasingly common for younger generations to stay at home longer or returning home after college (or “boomeranging”) vs. live independently.

What’s more, many families that moved in together during the pandemic found it a happy arrangement, with grandparents able to care for grandchildren and vice versa. Additionally, as our nation’s demographics evolve, there are more communities where multi-generational living has always been embraced, like in many Asian and Latin American countries.

A diverse, multi-generational family sitting and laughing together around an outdoor patio dining table filled with food.

One garden, many hands

For Christine Bates, a widowed mother of six who lives on a two-acre farm in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, an injury was the reason her second-youngest returned home. In 2023, Christine was bedridden after suffering a fractured vertebra and nerve damage.

“They did a great job at getting me back on my feet,” she said of L, her non-binary adult child who moved back to the farm from the West Coast shortly thereafter. (Other family members have moved back for periods of time, too.)

These days, she’s recovered but still lives with L, who helps with growing sweet corn as well as squash, herbs, green beans, tomatoes, peppers and vegetables to make kimchi, including Napa cabbage, daikon, and garlic chives. There’s also a greenhouse in the works, to cultivate special varieties of tomatoes, because gardening together is what keeps this family connected, Birgitta says. On a recent visit to her granddaughters who live in Portland, for example, Ms. Bates brought seeds from her garden to plant in theirs.

“Even though we are not all living here, we have a connection to each other via plants,” she said. “It’s a connection of goodness in a world that’s kind of difficult.”

A smiling woman holding gardening tools stands in a lush garden next to another family member outdoors.

Roses, yes, but thorns, too

But not all families have as easy a time cohabiting. Sometimes, there’s strife about space, the division of labor, finances, privacy, politics, and other issues. According to Pew Center Research, a full quarter of adults living in multigenerational households say the arrangement is stressful all or most of the time.

When tensions rise between generations, working the soil can help defuse the situation, according to research published in The Journal of Intergenerational Relationships. “Sometimes, I was barely on speaking terms with my adult stepson when he lived with us for six months, but we’d both turn up in the yard, weeding and deadheading, and it felt healing,” says one Indiana resident. Gardening together builds problem-solving, and of course gardening (even solo) engages the senses, lowers cortisol, and improves a mood.

And beyond those benefits, there’s another waiting if all goes well: a bushel of nutritious vegetables and beautiful blooms to be shared.