I met with the editors of Garden Answers and Garden News, two of the top British gardening magazines, today.
The monthly Garden Answers is a practically based magazine with much of the information put across in an easy and accessible Q&A format and which concentrates on the plants - choosing the right varieties and how to grow them well - supplemented by thoughtful shopping advice.
Garden News is Britain’s, perhaps the world’s, only gardening newspaper. It features news, of course, wide ranging timely practical advice and, historically, rounded up awards from the shows around the country. It's still a regular weekly read for specialist gardeners – be it dahlia and chrysanthemum exhibitors or keen veg growers.
Both titles have been around for a long time but, like most British gardening magazines, they’re selling fewer copies than a few years ago. A number of magazines are dead and gone, but GA and GN are very much alive and both are now putting a lot of thought into how best serve their readership in the digital age.
There’s a vast amount of information available online now, but just as radio never replaced the newspaper (as was once feared) and television never displaced radio (indeed radio goes from strength to strength) the internet will not replace magazines. The question is how to integrate print and online service to provide the information that gardeners need in the way they need it. There’s nothing like relaxing with a magazine, but the immediacy and richness of the web is equally tempting.
My idea? Use the web to add value to the material in the magazine – additional step-by-step practical advice, how-to videos, extensive where-to-buy information and expanded background on issues which can only be touched on in print. And make most of it available only to subscribers. You can subscribe to both Garden Answers and Garden News here.