Americans spent more on lawn and garden products and services in 2025 than in any year on record. Total U.S. lawn and garden spending reached $79.0 billion, an increase of 13.5% over 2024.
Participation moved the other way. The share of households taking part in gardening fell from 84.1% to 79.2%, roughly 4.5 million fewer participating households, while average spending per participating household rose 18.3% to $740.
That sets up the central question behind the record: how much of the increase reflects higher prices, and how much reflects higher spending among the households that remain active?
Key Highlights
-
U.S. lawn and garden spending reached a record $79.0 billion in 2025, up 13.5% year over year.
-
Average spending per participating household rose 18.3% to $740.
-
Gardening participation fell from 84.1% to 79.2%, about 4.5 million fewer participating households.
-
Garden Research reports cumulative garden-related inflation of 25.9% between 2019 and 2025.
-
Spending per participant rose across multiple activities, led by tree care (+76%), with shrub care up 41%, lawn care up 26%, and vegetables up 24%.
-
38% of gardeners under 35 buy natural or organic fertilizer, compared with 14% of gardeners aged 65 and older.
-
Renters who garden out-purchased homeowners in vegetable seed (43.5% vs. 36.6%) and herb seed (32.7% vs. 22.0%).
-
Online delivery reached a record 45.9% of garden purchasing, while home centers accounted for 43.0% of garden spending.
Gardening Spending Hit a Record as Participation Fell
The 2026 National Gardening Survey puts total U.S. lawn and garden spending at $79.0 billion for 2025, up 13.5% from the previous year.
Spending per participating household climbed faster still, rising 18.3% to $740.
Participation moved in the opposite direction, falling from 84.1% to 79.2% of households. That works out to around 4.5 million households stepping back from gardening activity.
The two trends together rule out the simplest explanation for a record. Growth did not come from a widening base of gardening households: it came from higher average outlay among the households that stayed active.
That also means the headline total and the per-household figure describe different things. The $79.0 billion is the size of the whole market, while the $740 describes what a typical participating household spent within it.
Inflation Explains Part of the Increase
Prices are a substantial part of the story. Garden Research reports cumulative lawn and garden inflation of 25.9% between 2019 and 2025, with some service categories rising considerably more than that.
When prices climb at that pace, spending totals can rise even if households buy the same quantity of plants, tools, and services as before.
The 2026 survey addresses this directly by introducing inflation-adjusted analysis, separating three outcomes: real category growth, spending increases largely absorbed by inflation, and real declines.
The category-level detail behind that analysis sits in the full survey rather than the public summary, so the available figures do not support treating any single category's increase as pure demand growth.
What the public data does support is a narrower reading: inflation accounts for part of the rise in spending, and the survey's own decision to separate real growth from inflation-absorbed growth indicates that prices do not account for all of it.
Inflation appears on the demand side too. Among households planning to garden more in 2026, around two-thirds name inflation as an important reason.
That is worth stating precisely. The data shows cost pressure influencing why some households intend to garden more, not that gardening delivers net savings.
Gardeners Are Spending More Across Several Categories
Spending per participant rose across several different gardening activities in 2025.
Tree care led the increases, up 76% from $163 to $286 per participating household. Shrub care rose 41% and insect control 35%.
Edibles moved as well. Spending on herbs rose 31% per participant, while vegetables rose 24%, from $87 to $108.
Lawn care rose 26%, from $235 to $297, the highest per-participant figure among the activities with dollar values reported.
These are averages among households that participate in each activity, not total category sales. A rise in spending per participant can occur even when the number of participants in that activity is flat or falling.
The increases are not confined to one type of gardening. They appear in tree and shrub care, pest control, lawns, and edibles alike, though each figure describes only the households active in that activity rather than sales for the category as a whole.
The mix is also worth noting. The steepest gains sit in maintenance activities such as tree care, shrub care, and insect control, and Garden Research reports that some service categories saw price increases well above the 25.9% cumulative figure, which limits how much of those gains can be read as added volume.
Younger Gardeners and Renters Are Buying Differently
Purchasing patterns also differ by age and housing type.
Among gardeners under 35, 38% buy natural or organic fertilizer. Among gardeners aged 65 and older, the figure is 14%.
Renters who garden also out-purchased homeowners in two seed categories: 43.5% of renters bought vegetable seed against 36.6% of homeowners, and 32.7% bought herb seed against 22.0%.
Both findings describe what these groups buy, not the whole market and not where the growing happens. The survey does not indicate whether renters are sowing those seeds indoors, on balconies, or in shared plots.
Product preference, in short, is not uniform across the gardening population. Organic inputs and seed skew toward younger and renting buyers, while other categories skew toward long-tenured homeowners.
Houseplants, Retail and Consumer Behavior
Indoor plants show the same price pressure visible across the wider category. Bureau of Labor Statistics data puts prices for indoor plants and flowers 4.7% higher year over year in July 2026, following a 5.5% year-over-year increase in June.
CPI tracks price movement only. It says nothing about how many houseplants Americans bought, how many they own, or how large the category is, so it cannot be read as a growth rate for the houseplant market.
Houseplants and container gardening are treated as distinct activities in the National Gardening Survey, though 2025 spending and participation detail for them is not in the public summary.
Where Americans buy garden products shifted noticeably in 2025. Home centers increased their share of garden spending by five percentage points to 43.0%, while online delivery reached a record 45.9% of garden purchasing.
Those two figures measure different aspects of buying behavior and should not be added together as slices of a single total. Read separately, they show large physical retailers and online ordering both gaining ground.
One further constraint sits outside price. Garden Research's What Gardeners Think 2026 study found 61% of gardeners say they would garden more if they knew more about it, making knowledge one of the largest reported barriers to greater participation.
What the Data Shows
Two things are happening at once: the households still gardening are spending considerably more on average, and garden prices have risen substantially since 2019.
Total spending is at a record $79.0 billion, up 13.5%. Participation fell to 79.2% of households. Average spending per participating household rose 18.3% to $740.
Cumulative garden inflation of 25.9% since 2019 accounts for a meaningful share of that increase, but it does not account for all of it, and the public data does not allow a clean split between price and volume at the category level.
Beneath the totals, the growth is uneven. Tree and shrub care, insect control, herbs, lawns, and vegetables all posted double-digit or better gains in spending per participant, while preferences for organic inputs and seed differ substantially between younger gardeners, older gardeners, renters, and homeowners.
The record, then, sits on a smaller participating consumer base spending more on average and facing higher prices, with the increases spread unevenly across categories and consumer groups rather than reflecting a broad return to gardening.