Garden Tourism

Notwithstanding the explosion of myriad now-recognized tourism market segments, the phenomena of people visiting gardens that are not their own—garden tourism—has still not received the recognition it deserves. Why a segment with over 5,000 venues and possibly 300 million visitors annually would have flown under the tourism radar for so long is puzzling. It may be that visitation for individual small gardens is usually less than 50,000 per year; it may be that entry is often free or very low cost, thus generating lower revenues; it may be that garden visitation is usually for only a couple of hours rather than all day or more than one day; and it may be that the tourism activity is somewhat passive and urban based.

Whatever the explanation, there ...