New House & Garden Intends Broad Coverage

Fri., Aug. 23, 1996

Sandy Coleman The Boston Globe

There’s something strange that happens when you become a homeowner; a madness overtakes you.

You could be a perfectly happy apartment dweller, carefree, unconcerned about the roof shingles over your head or the siding surrounding you.

Sure, you notice some bushes and flowers outside of your building, but you have no inclination to know what kind, no concern about how they are arranged.

Buy a house and your mind is taken over by thoughts of entryways and how to improve them, yards and how to landscape them, walls and how to paint them.

And for every aspect of the madness, there is a magazine to encourage you.

Home, Garden Design, Metropolitan Home, Traditional Home, House Beautiful, Elle Decor, Country Living, Better Homes and Gardens, and, of course, for every reader who owns a glue gun, Martha Stewart Living. The list goes on longer than the list of supplies you want from Home Depot.

And, this month, there’s a renewed kid on the block in an already crowded neighborhood of what the industry calls “shelter” magazines. Conde Nast’s House & Garden has returned to the scene with a September issue after a three-year absence.

In 1993, Conde Nast discontinued House & Garden, which was founded in 1901, after acquiring Architectural Digest.

The idea was to fold as much as possible of what House & Garden had to offer into Architectural Digest. But readers and advertisers weren’t satisfied.

House & Garden publisher David Carey likens the change to Coke’s decision to come out with New Coke. Remember how well that went?

On Aug. 13, House & Garden returned to newsstands with an impressive 372 pages, 207 of them ad pages, and an estimated circulation of more than 500,000.

But with so many magazines already out there, is there room? Carey says definitely yes.

“Part of the magazine’s position speaks to the fact that there are a lot of titles out there,” said Carey. Readers and advertisers are tired of niche publications that fragment coverage rather than take a broader look, he said. So that’s why the magazine is back.

“People are clearly very focused on their homes and gardens. There’s a whole generation who ran away from home who are now embracing home,” said Carey.

The new magazine, which this month features a piece on childhood homes by John Updike, includes cooking and entertainment coverage; “Object Lessons,” a regular feature on furnishings; and “Domestic Bliss,” a look at the latest trends in the marketplace.

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