2007-12-31

Lawn care vs. native plants

Errors corrected 1 Jan 08

Google Trends is a way to compare the incidence of key word phrases in search and in news media. In the graph below I compare the incidence of "lawn care" and "native plants" in all Google search (top graph) and in US news media (bottom graph - blank due to insufficient data).




"lawn care" shows cyclic peaks in the spring of each year. "native plants" peaks in the spring as well, but seems to lag "lawn care" by a month or so - is this because the lawn care industry has a well-oiled and proactive PR machine? Are native plant articles usually an afterthought of harried newspaper garden writers?

A similar graph for California alone isn't too interesting because of sparse data.

Of note in the "native plants" graph is the slight uptick for the proper (California) fall planting season, right before "lawn care" declines in advance of winter.

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