Has gardening come down to earth?

Lawns are out. Vegetables are in. Slow gardening is in. Instant gratification is out.

So declares Suzi McCoy in her-just-published annual Trends report. She's the chief of the Garden Media Group, a public relations firm outside Philadelphia that specializes in representing horticultural companies and products. I've gotten help from GMG on many stories and have a lot of respect for them.

Suzi's annual Trends report is, of course, done in the service of her business and the report (available here; click on "Trends" for pdf files of the current one and two years back) is sprinkled with pitches for her clients' products. But she's been doing this for years and I find that the underlying thinking is always interesting to read. She pays attention to signals and data from all across the horticulture business and does a good job of synthesizing them. She boils them down into an in/out list that, though marked by hyperbole, is often reflected in what turns up the following season in garden centers and gardens.

Since fashion has never been my best subject, Suzi's annual prognostication was an especially helpful source for me during the housing-boom credit-happy-spending years when gardening trends, including trends in plants, often seemed to be all about decor.

But her bottom-line conclusion this year is that now it's different: The combination of economic meltdown and increasing environmental consciousness is going to make big changes in the way Americans garden.

Now, I have my doubts about some of her conclusions. Will a generation raised on the seeming magic of 24-hour transformations on cable-TV landscaping shows really temper their expectations to wait for plants to grow and learn how to really garden? I'm dubious.

But vegetables are definitely in. The Garden Writers Association (a trade organization of which I'm a member and a volunteer) recently released one of their quarterly gardener surveys showing that yes, there was a noticeable increase in vegetable gardening last year and (if the surveyed gardeners actually getting around to doing what they spend January planning to do -- always a challenge for gardeners) there will be another increase this year. Research led by Bruce Butterfield for the National Gardening Association shows the same trend.

My gut and my observation, too, say that the values associated with sustainability -- using land more intensively, wasting less water, avoiding toxic chemicals, searching for long-lasting, lower-maintenance plants, avoiding excess packaging -- really are sinking into the mainstream of gardeners, beyond the circle of hard-core plant geeks and tree-huggers I tend to hang out with.

The demographics drive it: The postwar generation of gardeners who were educated to reach for a spray bottle or a blue powder and whose idea of a garden is a big spread of annuals or a tilled vegetable plot surrounded by lawn are aging out of gardening. The majority of Baby Boomers who demanded ever-larger houses and lawns are aging and downsizing too. The housing market of the future is likely to be built on smaller and less expensive houses, smaller lots, tighter regulations on water and fertilizer use, altered community standards and expectations for landscapes and consumer demand for yards that need less mowing and other maintenance.

The younger people who we hope will buy those houses and take up gardening (buying a house is the catalyst that makes most gardeners) have grown up in a world full of environmental messages and food safety scares. Many of them will try to grow at least some of their food, and once they do that, they will expand their gardening horizons year by year. They will become more aware that they share their gardens with other species. They may even be drawn by gardening to care about the larger natural world. I've interviewed a lot of gardeners and typically that's how it goes.

Tomorrow's homeowners also will want to make more intensive and functional use of what land they can afford than has been the standard in the subdivisions of the last 50 years. They may keep some lawn as long as they have young kids, but they will be able to find better things to do with that space once the kids grow out of the swing set. They won't see the logic of watering, mowing and fertilizing a big stretch of lawn just to look at.

Surveys from the NGA back up my sense that environmental sensibilities are taking hold. They also show that most gardeners aren't making a lot of strides toward actually changing what they do. So far. But I have hopes that as we start to emerge from the Great Recession, we will find some real change.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

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