Gardens are like fingerprints—each one unique. For each gardener, their garden reflects their personal gardening values, strengths, and goals. Garden values and strengths are reflected in your garden personality and are at the core of every garden. By understanding your garden personality before you begin your garden each season, you will be able to define the necessary goals needed in order to achieve the success and results you desire. But how do you discover your garden personality?

What's Your Garden Personality? Images of the Eight Different Personalities: Garden Chef, Alchemist, Explorer, Sage, Buddha, Artist, Activist, and Ninja

Garden Personalities: What Are They?

Before you discover your garden personality, you must first understand more about the different garden personalities. Over the years, the gardening experts at Grow Your Own Vegetables have observed that gardeners typically share eight distinct core values. Those eight values are:

  1. Beauty
  2. Education
  3. Enjoyment
  4. Harvest
  5. Health and Wellness
  6. Nature Connection
  7. Physical Activity
  8. Positive Environmental Impact

While most gardeners find all or at least many of these eight values to be important to them, generally, one or two values emerge as the strongest and most important to an individual gardener. Thus, your garden personality—and in turn, the corresponding Garden Hero—is identified.

Beauty: The Garden Artist

Garden Artists appreciate the benefit that is received from the fresh food that their garden provides. However, they value the beauty that the garden brings to their world even more. These gardeners do not necessarily plant foods they want to consume. Instead they plant based upon the look, height, and color of the resulting plants. They consider their garden their masterpiece and want to share the beauty with their friends, family, and community.

Education: The Garden Explorer

As the saying goes, “Never stop learning because life never stops teaching.” This is true of Garden Explorers. They look to their gardens as a source of knowledge and experimentation. Their gardens can be in neat rows or a chaotic mess or anything in between, depending on their ultimate goal. Garden Explorers are generally more interested in the data results from their gardening efforts than the actual food produced. 

Enjoyment: The Garden Buddha

Garden Buddhas love everything about their garden, and they love to share their gardens—both in stories and in products. For a Garden Buddha, their garden is about the peace, relaxation, and comfort that they receive from being in it. They typically do not have much in the way of an actual garden plan or design other than a peaceful place to escape the stresses of everyday life.

Harvest: The Garden Chef

Which is more important—how much you grow or how good it tastes? The answer is both, if you are a Garden Chef. They want to maximize their time, space, and results. While Garden Chefs also enjoy gardening, they are more about the results—quantity and quality.

Health and Wellness: The Garden Alchemist

Ludwig Feuerbach, a 19th century philosopher, said, “We are what we eat.” Garden Alchemists follow this same belief. They recognize the health advantages in understanding what they eat and study to understand the full benefits of each food they grow and consume. A Garden Alchemist tends to have a large garden as well as lots of variety within it.

Nature Connection: The Garden Sage

A Garden Sage views his gardens as a source of knowledge, much like a Garden Explorer. However, unlike the Garden Explorer, a Garden Sage is not concerned with experiments and data. Instead for them, it is about personal observation and making a connection to all parts of their garden, including the weeds, bugs, and dirt. Garden Sages allow nature to take its own path in deciding how and where things grow. 

Physical Activity: The Garden Ninja

The physical activity of garden work is what Garden Ninjas value. This includes viewing physical activity from both ends of the spectrum. Their focus can be about how to achieve more with less physical exertion or about how to achieve the most physical fitness from their garden work. Both types of Garden Ninjas work to achieve a bountiful harvest.

Positive Environmental Impact: The Garden Activist

While having a garden is part of a green lifestyle for all gardeners, Garden Activists value this part of gardening above all else. They are serious about making an environmental impact through their actions and strive to be an inspiration to those around them. Garden Activists love the fresh nutritious food achieved in their garden harvests, but they also want to ensure that they leave the area around them in a better place for future generations.

Garden Personalities: Which One Are You?

Your garden is an expression of your values, strengths, and goals. Whether you’re a Garden Artist or a Garden Activist, your garden tells a unique story about who you are as a gardener. Embrace your garden personality for it is a reflection of your connection to the natural world and what you hold most dear.

To find out more about the different garden personalities as well as how to discover your individual garden personality, Grow Your Own Vegetables created a handy free downloadable eGuide that outlines how to identify your values and the garden goals that align with those values. You can download your free copy HEREDiscover Your Garden Personality eGuideYour garden personality may change over time or maybe even change every year. Use this eGuide at the beginning of each season to re-evaluate in order to naturally cultivate a mindset of success and to help you continually embrace your inner Garden Hero.

Once you have discovered your garden personality, be sure to check out the merchandise available in the Grow Your Own Vegetables’ Online Shop featuring the different Garden Hero personas. 

Store window featuring some of the GYOV Garden Personality merchandise. (A sweatshirt, a tote bag, a tumbler and mug, another tote bag, and a T-shirt)